Synopses & Reviews
"Crying": story number 13 from
Anthropology
My girlfriend left me, and I started crying in my sleep. My nightly lament became so loud that my neighbors called the police. The press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. Television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. They tracked her to her new boyfriend's house. I watched the coverage. People were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that I should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl.
In 101 words each, the 101 witty, haunting stories of Anthropology chronicle the search for love in an age preoccupied with sex. Each story is a pure distillation of heartbreak, longing, delusion, and bliss. Each spins speedily, shockingly, to its unpredictable climax. And each is unlike anything you have read before.
Anthropology's macabre humor builds imperceptibly, story by story and girlfriend by girlfriend, until it reflects with surreal accuracy how we try to complete ourselves through or at the expense of another. Read it to laugh and forget your sorrows; read it to recognize and remember your delights; read it to discover a vivid, provocative new talent.
Review
"An ingenious project in prose construction....Rhodes seems to have created a new, ostensibly senseless form that yields some true delights." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[A]n interesting and enjoyable prose experiment....Within these minimalist constraints, Rhodes has created a funny, quirky, often absurd, and occasionally profound collection....Unusual, unexpected, and very enjoyable." Booklist
Review
"Complex and playful crushingly wicked moments make it perfectly bite-sized reading." The Times (London)
Review
"Although readers will laugh out loud at points, there is a sinister quality to this book, perhaps a guilty reaction from taking pleasure in the nameless narrator's suffering." Library Journal
Review
"This collection is a literary curiosity developed with wit and skill, and is a wonderful basis for an assignment as well as a literate study of the human condition." School Library Journal
Review
"You hungrily absorb this book the way you do Nietzsche's aphorisms: You look for truths; you look for yourself; you look for explanations. Of course this is more fun than Nietzsche because there are more laughs. Rhodes boils down the stories of love between men and women to their comic, sad, and mad essentials: why we want each other and why we repel each other." Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! and What's Not to Love?
Synopsis
Simplicity finds enormous power in Dan Rhodes's offbeat collection of short (very short) stories. With his award-winning Timoleon Vieta Come Home and chick-lit send-up (under the nom de plume Danuta De Rhodes) The Little White Car, his authorial range became obvious. Now his remarkable collection, Anthropology, only enhanced Rhodes's reputation. Declared one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2003, Rhodes possesses a talent for understated wallops and profound humor, which he devotes to unraveling sex, love, dating, and the confoundingly beautiful, inscrutable girlfriend in these short (but intense) musings.
Synopsis
Of Dan Rhodes's award-winning Timoleon Vieta Come Home, Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times said, "Mr. Rhodes [writes] with an anomalous blend of humor, heartfeft emotion and old-fashioned story-telling verve. He has written a beguiling and resonant little novel." And when he took on the nom de plume Danuta De Rhodes to pen his chick-lit send-up The Little White Car, Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post said, "Younger readers and chick-lit aficionados doubtless will be its most appreciative readers, but this old crock enjoyed it, too." Called an "ingenious project in prose construction" (Publishers Weekly), Anthropology enhanced Rhodes's reputation. He was declared one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2003. Rhodes's gift for understand wallops and his profound humor address sex, love, dating, and the confoundingly beautiful, inscrutable girlfriend.
Synopsis
Rhodes' profound humor addresses sex, love, dating, and the confoundingly beautiful, inscrutable girlfriend.
About the Author
Dan Rhodes was born in 1972. He lives in Kent, England. This is his first book. His e-mail address is
[email protected].