Hier soir en rentrant, devant la poubelle de l’immeuble d’à côté, quelqu’un avait aligné sur le muret une petite collection de livres dont, visiblement, il·le se débarrassait mais espérait qu’ils seraient sauvés avant le passage du camion-poubelle.
Dans le lot, très jolie découverte : The Doubtful Guest d’Edward Gorey, 1957 :
The Doubtful Guest is a short, illustrated book by Edward Gorey, first published by Doubleday in 1957. It is the third of Gorey’s books and shares with his others a sense of the absurd, meticulous cross-hatching, and a seemingly Edwardian setting. The book begins with the sudden appearance of a strange, penguin-like creature in a turn-of-the-century manor house. An aristocratic family struggles to coexist with the creature, who is by turns despondent and mischievous. By the final page, the guest has stayed for seventeen years, and shows “no intention of going away”.