Anthropology: and a hundred other stories
101 short stories, all 101 words in length. Romance collides head-on with the comic and surreal in Dan Rhodes’s uniquely entertaining first publication.
An ingenious series of perfect miniatures of doomed love.
With incredible economy each story holds up a cracked mirror to the private peculiarities of human relationships. The woman who uses cider for make-up remover; the lover whose field-work with Mongolian gays inspires her to sprout a handlebar moustache; the caring mother who binds her baby’s feet under the misapprehension that he’s a girl. Comic monologue meets the discipline of the sonnet writer, filtered by an imagination to rival Lewis Carroll.
”'The funny ones are all the funnier for being brief; the sad ones, all the sadder for being sparse. Every one a twenty-second gem; just don’t read them all at once.” - Maxim
”’Very funny and very sharp.” - The Times
”’Misanthropic, macabre and mordant tales of doomed couplings herald the arrival of Dan Rhodes.” - i-D
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