Seeds of Greatness

A great read! This first novel doesn't feel like a first novel perhaps because Jon Canter's cut his teeth in comedy writing in other media where a paragraph doesn't get a chance to limber up before attention has wandered. It sparkles with a brevity of wit and one-liners. David, the writer of this book, despite a promising start to his career ends up working in (not even owning) a bookstore in the English county of Suffolk, while his childhood friend, Jack Harris, rises to stardom as a talk-show host. On Jack's untimely death, David is commissioned to write his authorized biography, but its understood that he has only been given the job with understanding that he can be trusted to deliver a whitewash, which David cannot bring himself to do, and instead writes the book you are now holding - the truth. The set-up allows Canter to riff off the idea of twenty-first century celebrity (talk-show host?), the power, status and money it brings, and the way it changes ordinary lives. Canter is particularly funny and true when depicting the subtleties of the invisible, distorting, interference-pattern that surrounds celebrities when they bump up against us common folk, how we can change our behavior despite our better judgement. Even David runs the risk of succumbing, and in the end he faces a vital decision that promises to change his life forever. Despite being steeped in a broth of Jewish wit, the novel is a very English stew - it would make a fabulous movie in the Hugh Grant-in-Notting-Hill genre. Has he read it? He could make it happen.