The tension was unbearable, but we are at last able to reveal that Little Hands Clapping is spending its third week in Heat magazine’s Top 10. It’s sitting comfortably at number 7, and we now have another week of purgatory ahead of us as we wait to see if it can make it to a magical four weeks on the trot.
Great reviews are still rolling in. Unexpectedly, the Daily Telegraph has come up with a winner: “Disturbing and delightful. This is a crowded, lively book full of kooky flights of tangential fancy and engaging characters racked with unusual problems. Rhodes has devised a neat, dark and well paced plot.”
It’s good to see the Telegraph redeeming itself after their extraordinary coverage of Gold, which won its writer, Lloyd Evans, our now traditional Maggie Gee Award for Unbelievably Stupid Reviewing. This reminded us that it was time to start assembling the award for Little Hands Clapping. The trouble is, the reviews have been so positive that we’ve only found a couple of contenders – at the moment it’s a battle of the generations between some random old hippie and an iPhone-toting Twitter twerp. While both of them have completely failed to understand the book and have written stultifyingly dumb reviews, we’re not sure they have quite plumbed the depths to the point where they are worthy of the award. They certainly aren’t up there with Evans or Gee, or even last time’s wretched runners-up Tom Adair and Claire Alfree. So it’s looking as though the contest is still wide open. Further details here at our Dan Rhodes is disliked by page.
[Update March 2nd - We don't normally take The Spectator, but we bought a copy when they unexpectedly gave Little Hands Clapping a great review, and we were surprised to find an article called Cheapening the Currency, in which, interminably and over an entire page, "Lloyd Evans deplores the monstrous proliferation of arts prizes." Normally we would think an article like this had been written by someone who was bitter because they had never won a prize in their life. But Evans has won a prize (see above), and despite his moaning about award ceremonies, he was only too happy to visit the roof garden of our skyscraper, here in the heart of downtown Taipei, and accept his trophy in a long and lavish ceremony. That said, we can't be 100% sure that the right person turned up - we didn't know his address, so sent his invitation to Lloyd Evans, Plonker, UK. Still, whoever it was seemed to have a nice day.]
In other news, don’t forget to see Rhodes in a spectacular double-header with Alan Bissett at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow on Friday 12th March. Details here.
Happy reading.
