We would like to offer our warmest congratulations to Denmark for their victory in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. And what better way for Emmelie de Forest to unwind after all the commotion than to curl up with the Danish edition of This is Life? Published by our friends at Tiderne Skifter, it’s out under the title Dette er Livet.
Poor Bonnie Tyler though. Here she is in happier times:
Happy reading.
The paperback of This is Life is officially released today. A couple of reviews are already in: “Rhodes’ most accessible novel yet,” says the Sunday Herald, ”it is wholly charming.” And why not spoil yourself and read this review from The Independent? Glorious work.
And here’s a story from Rhodes’ other new book, Marry Me, being read in a pub by comedy’s Josie Long:
Loads more clips of leading celebrities reading stories from Marry Me can be found here.
In other news, we are delighted to announce the end of a battle that has been raging for longer than the Second World War (seriously – it went on for seven years). Rhodes’ former French publishers, Editions Stock, have finally taken enough time out from eating horses and force-feeding geese to put a few copies of their translation of The Little White Car into un sac jiffois and send them to the person who went to all the trouble of writing it.
This wretched struggle even made a cameo appearance in This is Life. The book is not a pretty sight – far from it – but at least Rhodes now has a complete set of editions in his trophy cabinet.
Happy reading.
We’re not 100% sure, but we think this month marks the tenth anniversary of the first publication of Rhodes’ widely misunderstood novel Timoleon Vieta Come Home. It’s close enough, anyway. We were going to mark the occasion by writing an interminable fact file on the subject, but instead of boring ourselves, and you, to tears with that, we’ve decided to reduce our retrospective to a brief breakdown of the book’s thunderous impact on popular culture.
First off, here it is being enjoyed by Frankie out of The Saturdays:
And being bought by Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up:
And best of all, here’s Cate Le Bon singing a song about it:
Rumour has it that Rhodes still isn’t quite sure how the book’s title is pronounced. (Note to aspiring authors: make sure you can pronounce the title of your book.) Readers are invited to say it however they want.
That’s enough of past glories – Rhodes’ latest novel, This is Life, is coming out next week in a handsome mass market paperback edition. Read all about it here. So the Eiffel Tower at the top of the page is relevant again.
And we’ve done a vague Marry Me reviews digest here.
Happy reading.
In which we round up the latest Marry Me reviews, and receive a solemn visit from the man himself…
Marry Me has been out for over a month now. If you’ve not bought a copy yet, don’t worry – it’s not too late. That said, if you don’t get your skates on it’ll soon be time to start asking yourself some pretty serious questions about what kind of person you are, and where your life is heading.
The deluge of press hasn’t let up – but has it been kind to the “prolific and ingenious” (Sunday Times) Rhodes? Has his “scintillating collection” (Independent on Sunday) thawed the icy hearts of the Dreaded Arts Correspondents? Surprisingly, they seem to have got it.
It’s not just the clever clog broadsheets - Heat magazine, who have historically been one of Rhodes’ staunchest allies, have excelled themselves yet again, with a five star review that you can read here. “Brilliantly clever and funny” they say.
And in a tale of redemption that is likely to tempt Hollywood, one of Rhodes’ longest-standing foes has come in with a bit of a beauty. Until now, Metro has done everything it can to drive Rhodes out of print and condemn his children to poverty, but this time around they seem to have finally discovered the ability to recognise quality when they see it. It lives here. “Very funny” they say. It just goes to show – if they can overcome their shortcomings and come good in the end, anyone can. Even you.
And now, in a rare move, it’s Over To Rhodes:
Goodbye, Sylvia Smith. One of my favourite writers died last week. For eight years, on and off, I worked as an unpacker in the basement of a branch of Waterstone’s. Every once in a while a book would catch my eye and I would open it up to see what was going on inside. Usually it was nothing much at all, and I would send it on its way to the shop floor. But occasionally a book would be instantly unputdownable and would follow me to the staff room on my breaks and then home again at the end of the day (paid for by this point – I knew I wouldn’t be bringing it back). This was how I discovered such beauties as A Crackup at the Race Riots by Harmony Korine, Jane Austen’s juvenilia, Be Wise, Be Otherwise by Kevin MacNeil, Church Life in Kent by Arthur J. Willis and Misadventures by Sylvia Smith.
Within a few pages I knew Sylvia Smith was going to be one of my favourites. These stories of everyday life in the world of rented rooms, temping jobs and disappointing romances rang true; at no point did I feel inclined to disbelieve a word she wrote. There was nobody else like her (or at least there was nobody else like her who was publishing collections of anecdotes). And, crucially, she was hilarious. I bought a copy for my mother, who was from the same generation and a similar background, and she loved it too. It went around the family, as did the follow ups – both of which were as good as Misadventures.
Sylvia Smith was a one off, and you either got her or you didn’t – a bit like a Daniel Johnston of the book world. I got her in spades, but plenty didn’t. The people who staff book review pages aren’t famous for getting jokes, and they didn’t get hers. One critique, by someone called Louise Carpenter in the Telegraph, stands as the foulest piece of book reviewing I’ve ever come across (read it here if you have a strong stomach). Sadly this bullying, snobbish attack wormed its way into her obituaries, where words like banal and boring leap out. She was neither. She was, in a way that was absolutely her own, brilliant. I’ll miss her. If you’ve not read her books, please do yourself a favour.
Happy reading.
Have you ever wondered about the darkest recesses of Dan Rhodes’ personal life and finances? Of course you have. Well you’re in luck, because the Marry Me publicity machine is in full flow, and in true celebrity style Rhodes has been drip-feeding intimate details to a hungry press.
First off, he has written one of those Top 10 things for the Guardian. As well as talking candidly about his own marriage, he has also recommended a bunch of marriage-related books for you to read (once you’ve read Marry Me, of course). Unfortunately they cut out his gag about Chandler from Friends circumcising a monkey. We can’t think why.
In a shock development, the Guardian also ran a very nice and very large review of Marry Me last Saturday.
There’s also been a vast and very friendly profile in The Independent in which you can find out more about how Rhodes spends his days, and how he copes with being one of the wealthiest men on the planet. (Incidentally, the bit about him retiring after being on the Granta list is just one of the many myths that has built up around him. He had in fact announced his retirement long before then, only ever intending to write three books before the age of thirty. Obviously that didn’t happen, but it’s no big deal – dramatically quitting and then changing your mind is standard practice in showbiz. Just ask Steps.)
And it’s not just the liberal press that has gone Dan Rhodes crazy – The Telegraph has run a bunch of the stories too. You can try before you buy here.
That’ll do for now. If we were on Twitter we would probably ask you to retweet those links. But we aren’t on Twitter, and we don’t know what ‘retweet’ means, so you’re in the clear.
We’ll leave you with the alternative comedian Stewart “You said ‘egg’” Lee reading a story from the book:
Happy reading.
