What’s the longest you’ve been delayed at an airport? Long enough to write a book? That’s the premise of Dear American Airlines, the debut novel of Jonathan Miles, reviewed in The New York Times by Richard Russo – though I’ve just realised you can only read that if you’re a registered user of the NY Times site. There’s an excerpt from the book itself on USA Today.

Russo, whose work I’ve discovered only recently, is a fine novelist himself. The Risk Pool is the best evocation I’ve read in a long time of small-town America.