Notwithstanding by Louis de Bernieres

(Vintage UK, $28.99)

on the strength of this book, Louis de Bernières moves to prime position on my favourite authors list.

It’s very funny, utterly charming, quite other-wordly and enormously readable. What’s more, it’s a collection of short stories and I’m not usually that wild about those. But as Elizabeth Strout did in olive Kitteridge, writing a series of short stories all about the same women to create a patchwork that reads like a novel, so Louis de Bernières has spun a series of tales all set in and around the fictional English village of Notwithstanding.

In this love letter to the rural idyll of his youth – where boys fish for pike, women in plus fours carry guns, widows still escort their husbands on everyday outings and moles can drive a man back to the city – the author recaptures the charm of a long-lost way of living.

Where else would you find a woman telling her young son by walkie-talkie that she thinks it’s time he got married? ”What on earth for?” her son demands. ”I’m only 42.” He then proceeds to train his dog Archie to retrieve eligible spinsters, despite his mother’s doubts that a dog’s idea of “eligible” will be to his liking.

And what of this description of the lovely countryside for which rural England is so well-known? “out on the roads, squashed baby rabbits were being dismantled by magpies, and frogs migrating to their breeding ponds were being flattened into very large thin medallions that would, once dried out, have made excellent beer mats.”

A man who can see beer mats in road kill and write about it in a way that makes you nevertheless feel the sun on your face and hear the birds tweeting in the trees gets my vote and always will.

I liked Captain Corelli’s oandolin, I loved the more recent A Partisan’s Daughter, but I want to live in Notwithstanding. I have never laughed so much, nor subjected the Ginger to so many readings. He’s now in Notwithstanding with me.