T Cooper‘s The Beaufort Diaries is not out until next week, and already the critics are raving about it!  The Austin Chronicle beat everyone to the punch and published the first review this morning:

“T Cooper does the kind of thing that drives other writers mad: He takes the bones of stories told many times, in many ways, and shapes them into something singular and breathtaking…. Cooper’s nearly flawless prose is the meat of this work: It’s as if the author challenged himself to test his talents with a scenario that in less able hands would almost necessarily lapse into cliché and cheap satire. Instead, Cooper makes it original, humane, and deeply funny.”

T kicks off his national tour on Wednesday with a launch party at Melville House, and then heads to Boston (Brookline Booksmith), St. Louis (where he’s joined by illustrator Alex Petrowsky at Mad Art Gallery, sponsored by Left Bank Books), Berkeley (Pegasus Books), San Francisco (City Lights), Los Angeles (BookSoup) and Santa Monica (B&N), before heading back to New York for a rocking (literally) event at Bluestockings.

Since you can’t get your hands on the book (officially) until Tuesday, check out the animated short, starring the voice of David Duchovny, for now: