• About
  • Listening
    • Baroque
    • Bluegrass and Country
    • Classical Fusion
    • Classical Period
    • Early Music
    • Film soundtracks
    • Folk Music
    • Jazz
    • Modern Classical
    • Modern Pop Fusion
    • Musicals
    • Romantic Classical
    • Spoken word
    • World Music
  • Reading
    • Fiction
      • Children’s and Young Adult Fiction
      • Classic writers and their works
      • Contemporary Fiction
      • Crime and Detective Fiction
      • Fictionalised Biography
      • Historical Fiction
      • Horror
      • Lighter-hearted reads
      • Literary Fiction
      • Plays and Poetry
      • Romance
      • SF
      • Short stories
      • Western
      • Whimsy and Fantastical
    • Non-Fiction
      • Arts
      • Biography and Autobiography
      • Ethics, reflection, a meditative space
      • Food and Drink
      • Geography and Travel
      • Health and wellbeing
      • History and Social History
      • Philosophy of Mind
      • Science and nature
      • Society; Politics; Economics
  • Reading the 20th Century
  • Watching
    • Documentary
    • Film
    • Staged Production
    • TV
  • Shouting From The Soapbox
    • Arts Soapbox
    • Chitchat
    • Philosophical Soapbox
    • Science and Health Soapbox
  • Interviews / Q + A
  • Indexes
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
    • Sound Index
      • Composers Index
      • Performers Index
    • Filmed Index

Lady Fancifull

~ adventures in a mainly literary obsession

Lady Fancifull

Tag Archives: This Is Life

Dan Rhodes – This Is Life

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Fiction, Lighter-hearted reads, Reading, Romance

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Art, Book Review, Dan Rhodes, Humour, Paris, This Is Life

A quirky, fizzy, jazzy, joyful, feel-good delight!

This Is LifeDan Rhodes’ Paris  set confection, revolving around the setting of performance and conceptual art,  is sheer delight. The beautifully juggled storyline involves absolute chance, and includes nepotism, a cataclysmic cormorant, a jaded and cynical art critic, the paintings of Eugene Carriere, a brace of delightful young women, a rubber baby, a lethally thrown stone, a gun in the hands of a naif, a collection of fabulous scarves (Parisiennes ARE renowned for chic, after all) a cinema devoted to the screening of porn, and the complex relationship between Japanese tourists and love without language. And a piece of conceptual art that makes Hirst, Emin et al look tame.

Aurelie Reynard, her friend Sylvie Dupont, who combines the allure of Cleopatra, Helen, and Venus herself with an exceedingly tender heart, honesty and wit,  have an Amelie like allure, reminding the jaded, the cynical and the none of those, that joy is infectious.

This is an utterly sweet but remarkably saccharine free outing.

This is life cover

Rhodes has light-touch humour in his pen (well, no doubt his tapping electronic keyboard, or Dictaphone with software transfer to text, or something.

Eugene Carriere - The Sick Child

Eugene Carriere – The Sick Child

There is running gag fun to be had with a baby, who in the mouths of the French, seems inextricably to be called Air-bear, an uber-cool and highly glum Japanese woman devoted to her highly bad tempered uber-cool cat for whom she knits Viking helmets and the like, posting their photos onto Facebook in hope of going viral, and an living artwork involving the collection of bodily fluids and secretions. Not to mention alternative sources of energy.

Cross cat in hat Flicr, Commons

Cross cat in hat Flicr, Commons

Art – or even its imagined invention, can change lives, and be the subject and object of some darned fine jokes.

I received this as a review copy from the Amazon Vine UK programme. A real treasure Dan Rhodes credit Doro Bay 5of a gift, this!

I was particularly pleased to get this as a real copy, due to the charm and intricacy of the lovely dust-jacket and its  unfolding artwork

This Is Life Amazon UK
This Is Life Amazon USA

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Page Indexes

  • About
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
  • Sound Index
    • Composers Index
    • Performers Index
  • Filmed Index

Genres

Archives

February 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728  
« Mar    

Posts Getting Perused

  • Philip Glass - Glassworks
    Philip Glass - Glassworks
  • Cormac McCarthy - The Road
    Cormac McCarthy - The Road
  • Joanna Rakoff - My Salinger Year
    Joanna Rakoff - My Salinger Year
  • Janine Jansen - Bach: Inventions & Partita
    Janine Jansen - Bach: Inventions & Partita
  • Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out
    Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out
  • William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
    William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
  • John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
    John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
  • Barbara Vine - House of Stairs
    Barbara Vine - House of Stairs

Recent Posts

  • Bart Van Es – The Cut Out Girl
  • Joan Baez – Vol 1
  • J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations – Zhu Xiao-Mei
  • Zhu Xiao-Mei – The Secret Piano
  • Jane Harper – The Lost Man

NetGalley Badges

Fancifull Stats

  • 162,934 hits
Follow Lady Fancifull on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow on Bloglovin

Tags

1930s setting Adult Faerie Tale Andrew Greig Arvo Pärt Autobiography baroque Beryl Bainbridge Biography Biography as Fiction Bits and Bobs Bits and Pieces Book Review Books about Books Cats Children's Book Review Classical music Classical music review Classic Crime Fiction Colm Toibin Cookery Book Crime Fiction David Mitchell Dystopia Espionage Ethics Fantasy Fiction Feminism Film review First World War Folk Music Food Industry France Gay and Lesbian Literature Ghost story Golden-Age Crime Fiction Graham Greene Health and wellbeing Historical Fiction History Humour Humour and Wit Ireland Irish writer Irvin D. Yalom Janice Galloway Japan Literary Fiction Literary pastiche Lynn Shepherd Marcus Sedgwick Meditation Mick Herron Minimalism Music review Myths and Legends Neil Gaiman Ngaio Marsh Novels about America Other Stuff Patrick Flanery Patrick Hamilton Perfumery Philip Glass Philosophy Police Procedural Post-Apocalypse Psychiatry Psychological Thriller Psychology Psychotherapy Publication Day Reading Rebecca Mascull Reflection Robert Harris Rose Tremain Russian Revolution sacred music Sadie Jones Sci-Fi Science and nature Scottish writer Second World War SF Shakespeare Short stories Simon Mawer Soapbox Spy thriller Susan Hill Tana French The Cold War The Natural World TV Drama Victorian set fiction Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction William Boyd World music review Writing Young Adult Fiction

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Join 771 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: