Some stories are true that never happened.

Bellerive Oval, home of the might Tasmanian Tigers. As seen from Rosny Hill. December 2011.

Two quick reviews today. Raymond Radiguet’s The Devil in the Flesh was written when the author was just 18 years old in 1922. A grubby little tale about a nasty, selfish young Frenchman as he conducts an affair with a married woman whose husband is off fighting in World War One.

I dunno, but the narrator – a very superior and self-aware bastard – put me right off the whole thing. This book has a world of admirers, but I can’t help that it has more to do with the author’s early demise than it does the quality of his prose. I didn’t like it much. Give it a miss.

Thankfully, I liked the second book this week much more. I’ve read all of Dan Rhodes’ novels, and have to say that his latest Little Hands Clapping is probably his oddest yet. If you’re familiar with his oeuvre, that comment might come as a little shocking itself.

A plot synopsis? Set primarily in a German museum dedicated to suicide – created by a well-meaning woman obsessed by Luciano Pavarotti – and features a cast of colourful characters: a dangerously apathetic polyglot caretaker; a child-abuse survivor turned cleaner (convinced that she is damned to hell); numerous nameless people of various nationalities driven to ending their lives; a psychopathic GP with a tragic past, very peculiar tastes and a chubby Black Labrador named Hans; a Portuguese male model with the most beautiful face in the world; as well as his ex-girlfriend and a love-stricken baker.

Straightforward? Not quite....

Rhodes’ black comedy reminds me of a modern day fairy tale, very Brothers Grimm (meets the League of Gentleman) in its graphic exploration of human foibles and desires. For such a monstrous fare, the book is surprisingly light in its touch and warm in its telling. This is not something I’d expect to write when scenes involve Hans (the dog) coughing up an enormous severed penis while walking in the park.

There is humanity in the horror, and more than a bit of humour. If this sounds like your bag, get cracking and read it now! Highly recommended.

Comments

Roddy said…

Looks like a small crowd, on the day.

20 January 2012 at 13:52

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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