After last week's proof encounter this one should have made me happy because it came wrapped in the dust jacket.
It has been explained to me that, although they are basic fare, proof covers do in fact attempt to reflect the content of the book, hence the orange for the Chinese dissident of last week and so to this week's read The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King to be published by Picador in March.
Lurking under that dust jacket a jewel-like, well-within-my-zone, turquoise blue cover reflecting the dazzling array of butterflies collected by Thomas Edgar on his travels up the Amazon river.I quickly discarded the dust jacket 
this time because the book blended perfectly with my current quilting project.
In fact it more than blended. Sometimes there is a real fusion between what I'm making and what I'm reading and so my wallhanging, previously titled The Inundation of the Spring should now be called The Inundation of the Spring With the Sound of Butterflies.I had used a line from an Emily Dickinson poem
"the inundation of the Spring enlarges every soul" but the vibrant
colours in the wallhanging are more than reflected in this book.
That aside there is also a real Heart of Darkness theme running through Rachael King's book so the fusion will have to stop there.
My senses are always heightened by any mention of 
lavender in connection with Heart of Darkness.Wasn't there that rather ambiguous reference to the dough being lavender coloured? And was it dough? Rachael King drops in quite a few lavender references in this book and would you believe it, as I read the line "the copper-shot lavender chiffon falls in soft folds about her body" that theme from Ladies in Lavender started playing on the radio.
I was convinced it was another sign and we were in for an ambiguous casserole.
It's 1904 and young Thomas Edgar returns home to his wife
Sophie from his lepidopteral expedition up the Amazon a changed, silent and very disturbed man.
Was it something he ate or was it something he saw? Was it something he smoked or was it something he caught? Did he catch the butterfly of his dreams?
I couldn't possibly comment but The Sound of Butterflies is a good involving read contrasting the constraints of life in Edwardian England with the rather more lax state of affairs in the Amazon jungle.Both jungles of their own kind when you come to think about it.
It's all left me with an overwhelming urge to go to the Natural History Museum and gaze at all those tropical butterflies, though really I should be getting on with some quilting because, as a way of making myself complete and finish, The Inundation of the Spring With the Sound of Butterflies is entered in an exhibition later this year.
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