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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 appear with short lifestories including the Luciano Pavarotti-obsessed founder of the museum and her Pavarotti-lookalike husband, Hulda the cleaner who believes she is doomed to Hell, and Madalena the 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