2019/99: Lanny -- Max Porter

2019/99: Lanny -- Max Porter

He wants to kill things, so he sings. It sounds slow-nothing like tarmac bubbles popping in a heatwave. His grin takes a sticky hour. Cheering up, he chatters in the voice of a cultured fool to the dry papery wings and under-bark underlings, to the marks he left here last year, to the mice and larks, voles and deer, to the quaint memory of himself as cyclically reliable, as part of the country curriculum. He slips through one grim costume after another as he rustles and trickles and cusses his way between trees. He walks a few paces as an engineer in a Day-Glo vest. He takes a step in a dinner suit, then an Anderson shelter, then a tracksuit, then a rusted jeep bonnet, then a leather skirt, but nothing works. ... He clomps through the wood, wide awake and hungry for his listening. [p. 3]

I first attempted to read this as part of a 'green man' triptych, along with The Green Man's Heir and Silver in the Wood. However, it is not a book that can easily be read on a Kindle: the playful typography is rendered, in the ebook, as images rather than text. See here for an example ... And so I bought the first hardcover book I've purchased for a while.
( some spoilers for mid-plot )