Little Hands Clapping

Dan Rhodes' latest is a bizarre feast of macabre language and the blackest of laughs. To tell you too much about the plot is to give too much away. Not much happens in the book but the way it happens, the way Rhodes weaves intricate layer upon layer of stories together make this a frightfully funny book.

In a museum in Germany, there's a room where people go to kill themselves. What the museum is, you'll find out. The old man who runs the museum just wants a quiet life and so gives all the dead bodies straight to a grieving town doctor. What happens next, you'll find out. Mauro and Madalena escape their small town Portugese life to the big city where he becomes an arrogant male model and she a lonely student. What happens next, you'll find out. Pavarotti's wife makes exceedingly good cakes. How she fits in, you'll find out. There's so much that could be said about the book but that would ruin it. You have to read it to see the slow reveal of the shocking crime that will reverberate around the world.

Mix in a hungry dog called Hans, a lovelorn baker, spider-eating and the most grotesque of townfolks and you're in for a treat. Fans of tangential, incidental, character-driven comedic authors like Tibor Fischer and Will Self will love this book; it's not for the faint-hearted. Simply one of the most laugh-out-louds things I've read in a while.