Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel The Ballad of a Small Player is a perfectly structured book about an English lawyer on the run who spends his life playing baccarat in Macau casinos and hits a streak of luck so remarkable that he nearly falls in love. It’s something like a combination of a ghost story and a long lost love poem from the eighth century poet Li Po. I wept when I finished it recently.

It also made me realize I missed a friend.