Little Hands Clapping

Little Hands Clapping, is a novel by British author Dan Rhodes, published in 2010 by Canongate. Its title comes from a line in Robert Browning's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Plot introduction

The novel centres around a bizarre German museum dedicated to Suicide, Herr Schmidt its grim grey curator and the respectable Doctor Ernst Frölicher and his shocking secret. Various characters are appear with short lifestories including the Pavarotti obsessed founder of the museum and her Pavarotti lookalike husband, Hulda the cleaner who believes she is doomed to Hell, and Madalena a suicidal Portuguese student.

Reception

• Totally sick and brilliant, He sucks you into his world. I loved it., Douglas Coupland^[1]
• Almost every page of Little Hands Clapping has superb quirks or asides which will have the reader laughing. A sublime, brilliant novel, The Scotsman^[2]
• It should please cynical idealists and idealistic cynics alike., Financial Times^[3]

References

External links

• Little Hands Clapping at author's website
• Dan Rhodes's novel about a museum dedicated to suicide is by turns witty and gruesome review from The Guardian
• A mixture of the quaint, the sweet and the distinctly unpleasant, review from The Guardian by Colin Greenland
• review from The Independent
• "I don't feel like a natural" interview at The Skinny
• Five books that loomed large while I was writing Little Hands Clapping