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Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes (view source)
Revision as of 12:35, 18 August 2020
, 12:35, 18 August 2020no edit summary
The town doctor who collects the corpse in the morning has a different diet entirely. He and several other odd characters - the cleaner, the museum owners - make this book look like a goofy, spirited collection of slightly zany, dark occurrences - so why, alternating with it all, is there a bittersweet tale of unrequited love from the hills of Northern Portugal?
I say alternating, but it's in no way such a structured weave. Instead , we get an appealing spread of flashbacks, flashforwards, and border crossing incidents, but the scale, speed and craft of the switches are definitely on the amenable side.
It's a quiet, unshowy balance between the bigger plot, all the major characters, and some vivid, illuminating detail when minor ones step to the fore - the brief look back at, and around, one of the female, er, visitors, to the museum is remarkable, and I'm sure memorable.
Of course, to many , the most vivid memory will be left by the doctor and his lifestyle, and it's certainly going to be the biggest source of displeasure in those not noticing the words ''totally sick'' and ''mortifying'' on the cover of my hardback edition. I found there was nothing to get me in my stomach, which partly is why a lot of this went past in a quizzical feel of pleasantness. It's a case of the subtlety of the weft, the warmth and interest of the Portuguese side, and the way Rhodes definitely writes both to amuse and provoke edgier emotions - and most importantly lets us to ourselves to know which is which - all playing to leave a perfectly decent read that for some major time does ''seem'' to suffer slightly from lack of focus.
That won't last much into part four, however, where dour Germans discuss water supplies and circumlocute a bravura scene, that I only hope you don't try to read while drinking a mug of cocoa...
And the final picture is one of a novel of unusual depth, a wicked blackness, and some sense of magical realism almost, contrasting with the grim central European colours. The book reviewing gods will attest I acted almost as like a moth to a flame myself over this title, and again the flame was a cautionary, life-affirming memento mori.
And just as the original seems utterly bizarre in its mix of mediums - Sylvia Platt with her head in the oven, done as a diorama of dolls' house contents - so this could well have something for everyone.
I must thank the kind Canongate people for my review copy.
You might also enjoy [[When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow by Dan Rhodes]].
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