The sky ablaze

The sky was ablaze on Saturday. Luckily I had my camera to my hand and snapped this photo from the train carriage as I hurtled from Bristol to London.

Photo: Rebecca Franks

This is Life

Every so often you need to read a cheer-me up kind of book. It’s generally to help escape those moments when life isn’t quite doing what you hoped it might, and all you feel like doing is curling up under a duvet. These kind of books are hard to find though, at least it seems that way to me. I don’t just want the instant sugar-rush of chick-lit happy-ever-after inevitability, but neither do I want profound complexity that’s going to leave my mind feeling more stretched than after listening to In Our Time or the Moral Maze. Striking that balance is no mean feat. But the other day, when I was (physically) in the Bristol Foyles and (emotionally) under the duvet, I found the perfect book for this task: This is Life, by Dan Rhodes. No, I’d not heard of him either. But this book had a cheerful picture of Paris on the front, a splendid fold-out street-scene cover, and lots of chirpy quotes, including one from Hilary Mantel: ‘Dan Rhodes is a true original, with a fresh, funny, quirky style’. Given that I’d just put Wolf Hall aside on the grounds it might be moving away from cheer-me up territory, Mantel's quote was the clincher. Sold.

Well, it was money well spent. This is Life is a charming, superbly constructed novel, in which characters do the strangest things but are wonderfully engaging. Over one week we follow the improbable adventures of art student Aurélie Renard when a stone’s throw, quite literally, leads her life to turn topsy-turvy and she ends up looking after a stranger’s baby. Meanwhile, Paris is about to host the controversial Life, an exhibition in which Le machine, a contemporary artist, lives on stage for three months, collecting all of his bodily excrements in expensive glass jars. The host of colourful personalities we encounter include Aurélie’s stunning best friend Sylvie Dupont, who’s looking for her ideal husband by working in seven different jobs, and leaves hordes of heartbroken hommes in her wake. Professor Papavoine is Aurélie’s day-dreaming professor; Jean-Didier Delacroix is a brilliant but insufferably smug art critic who was trained to be expressionless from childhood; and Monsieur Rousset is the owner of the Le charmant cinema erotique, now past its glory days. And let's not forget the French-Japanese translator Lucien who helps tourists around Paris, and falls in love with a photo of his latest clients' daughter. Add to that countless cameo roles, and you’ll have an idea of the bubbly world Rhodes has created. Funny then, that when I googled him to find out more, it seems that his previous novels have been dark, twisted. In this one there are dark undertones and goings-on, but Rhodes's light touch and deft exploration of what may or may not be the meaning of life, makes it a truly pleasurable read. This is Life made me smile, it made me think. And it had a well-earned happy ending. What more could you want from a cheer-me up book?