Death and the Penguin

Although technically I have not yet finished this book, I have this need to write something about it. I don't read as much as I would like for the simple reason that I read so much crap for my course and books in general have ceased to look appealing to me. But I already read one of his books and liked it. The way he writes fascinates me. It is this indifferent fusion of apathy and true sadness with which he describes the lives in his books. It is always about some loner that has little going for him and no prospects but by the sheer chance manages to become entwined in some weird and complex plot which sees him gain something that, from the start does not look much, but grows into something wonderful.
It is the tiny doses of emotion that Kurkov injects throughout the book, nothing that screams anything in particular, usually just a sentence here or there that shines all the more for its unusual position in the bleak story, and maybe it is that I am attracted to that sort of unspoken understanding in general, that makes me love books like this.
It is men that stop me and tell me what a great book this is as I read at the airport or having coffee, which made me think how I tend to find generally manly books more interesting, even though I have so little understanding of male psyche in real life.

"...at night they were reunited, and knowing that neither love nor passion came into it, he still found arms and body anticipating that time with eagerness. Embracing, caressing Nina, making love, he became oblivious of himself. The warmth of her body seemed to be that very spring he so looked forward to. And then, in the small hours, with Nina asleep and breathing gently, he lay open-eyed, with the curiously comfortable sensation of leading an ordered, normal life - for which the essential requisites: wife, child, pet penguin, were present; and obviously artificial as this foursome was, Victor shut his eyes to this fact for the sake of his feeling of comfort and temporary illusion of happiness."

In reality he has been left a child by some guy he did work for, and is fucking her 19 year old nanny. The penguin was given to him by the zoo that could not feed it, and at this point, there is something wrong with it. Apparently penguins suffer heart disease in temperatures that aren't native to them and I am almost afraid to read further for the fear that it dies.
And then I will cry about it just like I cried about that suicidal dog.