David Leavitt's The Body of Jonah Boyd is one of those books I struggled for most of a weekend trying to describe in a few hundred words; a book that's a perfect pleasure to read and a perfect pain to describe in any kind of a cogent way. It's the story, among other things, of the fate of an author's manuscript, as told by a secretary attached to a family who becomes tangentially attached to the author. Anyway, the review -- hopefully in a not too damaged form -- will be coming out sometime soon in the Charlotte Observer. In the meantime, read it. Wonderful and often cruelly funny book about art, life, and fate.