- Paperback: 286 pages
- Publisher: Chomu Press; 1st edition (18 May 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1907681086
- ISBN-13: 978-1907681080
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.3 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 618,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Self-reflective mirrors looking for their own reflections. Towns that migrate to the moon. Prisoners of elaborate dungeons and gigantic miniature solar systems. Robots, ghosts, rascals, explorers, troubadours, apemen and yetis. All are present in the multiverse of inversion and invention that is Link Arms with Toads! Rhys Hughes is a unique figure in contemporary fiction whose speculative whimsicality is not so much balanced as trampolined by tensile prose and puckish pensiveness. Link Arms with Toads! forms the ideal introduction to his work.
About the Author
Rhys Hughes was born in 1966 in Cardiff but grew up in the seaside town of Porthcawl. He began writing at an early age but his first publications were chess problems and mathematical puzzles for newspapers. He sold his first short story in 1992 and his first book, Worming the Harpy, was published in 1995. Since then he has embarked on a mammoth project of writing exactly 1000 linked 'items' of fiction, including novels, to form a gigantic story cycle. Many of these 'items' have appeared in journals and anthologies around the world, and his books have been translated into Spanish, French, Greek, Portuguese, Russian and Serbian. His work has attracted attention for its originality of ideas, ingenuity of plotting and rich playfulness of his language.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Literary whimsy, like literary nonsense, demands a harsh edge, a counterbalance to its playfulness that prevents it from becoming irredeemably precious: a dark lining for the silver cloud. Nonsense is likely to be macabre, as in the death jokes of Lewis Carroll or the dreadful fates of Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies. Whimsy, on the other hand, can be subtler and more subdued in its flashes of shadow. Such is the case with Rhys Hughes' Link Arms With Toads! a career-spanning collection that is, in the author's view, the best single introduction to his work. If it is indeed representative of the quality of his other fiction, Hughes is not only remarkably prolific but also a writer of unconfined imagination with a gift for wordplay and a sharp, wry sense of humor.
The stories in Link Arms With Toads! could be classified in any number of genres and subgenres: fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, the weird, the satirical, tragical-pastoral-historical-comical-- but you get the point. Within its first fifty pages, the collection presents its reader with a wandering group of seductive music instructors ("The Troubadors of Perception"), a note-perfect parody of M.R. James that also takes in parallel universes ("Number 13 1/2"), a world in which the mystery of under-patronized Indian restaurants has evolved into a space program and a religious experience ("The Taste of the Moon"), and a contemporary-Gothic Birmingham with an unorthodox plan for winning an unorthdox contest ("Lunarhampton"). It should be obvious that a representative selection of Hughes' style is impossible, but here's a paragraph anyway.
"He shook a finger. 'Oh no, Ms Sting! You won't pull that particular shade of wool over my eyes.' In a more conciliatory tone, he added: 'The car is a minor issue. We all make sacrifices, we all have fears. My dear mother was startled by a monkey. She was pregnant and the shock affected her womb. The world is an absurd place.'"
Indeed. And Hughes is the perfect chronicler of that absurdity, not simply because of his gift for whimsy, but because that gift is accompanied by a feeling for the symbolic value of the strange. No cheap moralizer or allegorist, he nonetheless imbues his tales with awareness of the human yearning for companionship, purpose, clarity, and fulfillment. "The Expanding Woman," which like quite a few of these remarkable tales is previously unpublished, involves a battle between Klingon and Esperanto, an enormous cracked orbital mirror, and (surprise, surprise) an expanding woman, but it's also a melancholy meditation on the (dis)contents of futurism. Make no mistake: Link Arms With Toads! is hilarious reading, and can, if one so wishes, be taken simply as an entertainment. But it's also rewarding for those with higher expectations.
To do the book justice, a reviewer ought to describe and discuss each story, for this is hardly one of those collections in which every tale is like the others. But my limited store of superlative adjectives is already sorely depleted. How would I praise the ingenious plotting of the Poe-inspired "Pity the Pendulum," the parable-like irony of "333 and a Third" and "Discrepancy," the sheer bizarrerie of "Hell Toupee"? I suppose preterition will have to do. Rhys Hughes is a singular talent, and the fact that this and many of his other collections have been released by small presses should not be taken as a sign to the contrary. Like his wandering troubadours, he has talent, and ambition, on a greater scale:
"While we argue, debate, cajole, the waiter serves us all supper. We need to fortify ourselves for the tribulations ahead. But we must not be defiled. We are minstrels, the lyric poets of the garden cities. Music alone is the reason for our being, we require no other sustenance. In this particular cafe our needs are understood. Do not fret. We shall rebuild Carcassonne, we shall. Solemnly, in the sinister light that emanates from the charcoal ovens, we dine on manuscript stew and violin steaks and pick splinters from between our broken teeth."
The stories in Link Arms With Toads! could be classified in any number of genres and subgenres: fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, the weird, the satirical, tragical-pastoral-historical-comical-- but you get the point. Within its first fifty pages, the collection presents its reader with a wandering group of seductive music instructors ("The Troubadors of Perception"), a note-perfect parody of M.R. James that also takes in parallel universes ("Number 13 1/2"), a world in which the mystery of under-patronized Indian restaurants has evolved into a space program and a religious experience ("The Taste of the Moon"), and a contemporary-Gothic Birmingham with an unorthodox plan for winning an unorthdox contest ("Lunarhampton"). It should be obvious that a representative selection of Hughes' style is impossible, but here's a paragraph anyway.
"He shook a finger. 'Oh no, Ms Sting! You won't pull that particular shade of wool over my eyes.' In a more conciliatory tone, he added: 'The car is a minor issue. We all make sacrifices, we all have fears. My dear mother was startled by a monkey. She was pregnant and the shock affected her womb. The world is an absurd place.'"
Indeed. And Hughes is the perfect chronicler of that absurdity, not simply because of his gift for whimsy, but because that gift is accompanied by a feeling for the symbolic value of the strange. No cheap moralizer or allegorist, he nonetheless imbues his tales with awareness of the human yearning for companionship, purpose, clarity, and fulfillment. "The Expanding Woman," which like quite a few of these remarkable tales is previously unpublished, involves a battle between Klingon and Esperanto, an enormous cracked orbital mirror, and (surprise, surprise) an expanding woman, but it's also a melancholy meditation on the (dis)contents of futurism. Make no mistake: Link Arms With Toads! is hilarious reading, and can, if one so wishes, be taken simply as an entertainment. But it's also rewarding for those with higher expectations.
To do the book justice, a reviewer ought to describe and discuss each story, for this is hardly one of those collections in which every tale is like the others. But my limited store of superlative adjectives is already sorely depleted. How would I praise the ingenious plotting of the Poe-inspired "Pity the Pendulum," the parable-like irony of "333 and a Third" and "Discrepancy," the sheer bizarrerie of "Hell Toupee"? I suppose preterition will have to do. Rhys Hughes is a singular talent, and the fact that this and many of his other collections have been released by small presses should not be taken as a sign to the contrary. Like his wandering troubadours, he has talent, and ambition, on a greater scale:
"While we argue, debate, cajole, the waiter serves us all supper. We need to fortify ourselves for the tribulations ahead. But we must not be defiled. We are minstrels, the lyric poets of the garden cities. Music alone is the reason for our being, we require no other sustenance. In this particular cafe our needs are understood. Do not fret. We shall rebuild Carcassonne, we shall. Solemnly, in the sinister light that emanates from the charcoal ovens, we dine on manuscript stew and violin steaks and pick splinters from between our broken teeth."
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Where Words Dare Not Go
7 May 2011
Format:Paperback
Rhys Hughes possesses on of the most richly imaginative minds of any contemporary writer. His ability to create stories that at firs appear grounded in realism only to explode into fantasy is matched only by his own creations where surrealism is written to be read as fact, as the development of a cast of characters and an idea are so completely credible that his eventual hints or injections of reality take the reader totally by surprise. But while many writers are able to delve into the interstices of fantasy fiction and populate their pages with created names of people and places that eventually tire the reader, Hughes instead remains the articulate wordsmith: no matter the story, the quality of writing is so fine that simply turning each page is a pleasure for the mind.
Hughes has mastered the art of recapitulation - finding a theme and then playing it out in repeated incidences until the final page delivers an unexpected rally. For instance, in '333 and a Third' a man searches for a room in a city no longer providing housing opportunities, finds a tiny space (a cupboard under a stairs) and moves in with the address being 333 and a third. Cramped and disillusioned he discovers a hole and then an Alice in Wonderland tunnel which leads him to another city with, yes the same problem and the same solution, etc etc - until he ultimately discovers he is in a hospital and faces undertakers with a space problem - a similarly confined 1/3 of a coffin. Or simply follow the well-oiled confusion of 'Hell Toupée' - the vary title of which should alert the reader of the hell to pay that will follow.
Reading Rhys Hughes is a leisurely process: one feel's that reading with too much speed the goodies may slip away unnoticed. He challenges our wit, our ability to imagine, our intellect and our table of entertainment. He is a complete pleasure. Grady Harp, May 11
Hughes has mastered the art of recapitulation - finding a theme and then playing it out in repeated incidences until the final page delivers an unexpected rally. For instance, in '333 and a Third' a man searches for a room in a city no longer providing housing opportunities, finds a tiny space (a cupboard under a stairs) and moves in with the address being 333 and a third. Cramped and disillusioned he discovers a hole and then an Alice in Wonderland tunnel which leads him to another city with, yes the same problem and the same solution, etc etc - until he ultimately discovers he is in a hospital and faces undertakers with a space problem - a similarly confined 1/3 of a coffin. Or simply follow the well-oiled confusion of 'Hell Toupée' - the vary title of which should alert the reader of the hell to pay that will follow.
Reading Rhys Hughes is a leisurely process: one feel's that reading with too much speed the goodies may slip away unnoticed. He challenges our wit, our ability to imagine, our intellect and our table of entertainment. He is a complete pleasure. Grady Harp, May 11
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Link Arms With Toads!
14 May 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Literary whimsy, like literary nonsense, demands a harsh edge, a counterbalance to its playfulness that prevents it from becoming irredeemably precious: a dark lining for the silver cloud. Nonsense is likely to be macabre, as in the death jokes of Lewis Carroll or the dreadful fates of Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies. Whimsy, on the other hand, can be subtler and more subdued in its flashes of shadow. Such is the case with Rhys Hughes' Link Arms With Toads! a career-spanning collection that is, in the author's view, the best single introduction to his work. If it is indeed representative of the quality of his other fiction, Hughes is not only remarkably prolific but also a writer of unconfined imagination with a gift for wordplay and a sharp, wry sense of humor.
The stories in Link Arms With Toads! could be classified in any number of genres and subgenres: fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, the weird, the satirical, tragical-pastoral-historical-comical-- but you get the point. Within its first fifty pages, the collection presents its reader with a wandering group of seductive music instructors ("The Troubadors of Perception"), a note-perfect parody of M.R. James that also takes in parallel universes ("Number 13 1/2"), a world in which the mystery of under-patronized Indian restaurants has evolved into a space program and a religious experience ("The Taste of the Moon"), and a contemporary-Gothic Birmingham with an unorthodox plan for winning an unorthdox contest ("Lunarhampton"). It should be obvious that a representative selection of Hughes' style is impossible, but here's a paragraph anyway.
"He shook a finger. 'Oh no, Ms Sting! You won't pull that particular shade of wool over my eyes.' In a more conciliatory tone, he added: 'The car is a minor issue. We all make sacrifices, we all have fears. My dear mother was startled by a monkey. She was pregnant and the shock affected her womb. The world is an absurd place.'"
Indeed. And Hughes is the perfect chronicler of that absurdity, not simply because of his gift for whimsy, but because that gift is accompanied by a feeling for the symbolic value of the strange. No cheap moralizer or allegorist, he nonetheless imbues his tales with awareness of the human yearning for companionship, purpose, clarity, and fulfillment. "The Expanding Woman," which like quite a few of these remarkable tales is previously unpublished, involves a battle between Klingon and Esperanto, an enormous cracked orbital mirror, and (surprise, surprise) an expanding woman, but it's also a melancholy meditation on the (dis)contents of futurism. Make no mistake: Link Arms With Toads! is hilarious reading, and can, if one so wishes, be taken simply as an entertainment. But it's also rewarding for those with higher expectations.
To do the book justice, a reviewer ought to describe and discuss each story, for this is hardly one of those collections in which every tale is like the others. But my limited store of superlative adjectives is already sorely depleted. How would I praise the ingenious plotting of the Poe-inspired "Pity the Pendulum," the parable-like irony of "333 and a Third" and "Discrepancy," the sheer bizarrerie of "Hell Toupee"? I suppose preterition will have to do. Rhys Hughes is a singular talent, and the fact that this and many of his other collections have been released by small presses should not be taken as a sign to the contrary. Like his wandering troubadours, he has talent, and ambition, on a greater scale:
"While we argue, debate, cajole, the waiter serves us all supper. We need to fortify ourselves for the tribulations ahead. But we must not be defiled. We are minstrels, the lyric poets of the garden cities. Music alone is the reason for our being, we require no other sustenance. In this particular cafe our needs are understood. Do not fret. We shall rebuild Carcassonne, we shall. Solemnly, in the sinister light that emanates from the charcoal ovens, we dine on manuscript stew and violin steaks and pick splinters from between our broken teeth."
The stories in Link Arms With Toads! could be classified in any number of genres and subgenres: fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, the weird, the satirical, tragical-pastoral-historical-comical-- but you get the point. Within its first fifty pages, the collection presents its reader with a wandering group of seductive music instructors ("The Troubadors of Perception"), a note-perfect parody of M.R. James that also takes in parallel universes ("Number 13 1/2"), a world in which the mystery of under-patronized Indian restaurants has evolved into a space program and a religious experience ("The Taste of the Moon"), and a contemporary-Gothic Birmingham with an unorthodox plan for winning an unorthdox contest ("Lunarhampton"). It should be obvious that a representative selection of Hughes' style is impossible, but here's a paragraph anyway.
"He shook a finger. 'Oh no, Ms Sting! You won't pull that particular shade of wool over my eyes.' In a more conciliatory tone, he added: 'The car is a minor issue. We all make sacrifices, we all have fears. My dear mother was startled by a monkey. She was pregnant and the shock affected her womb. The world is an absurd place.'"
Indeed. And Hughes is the perfect chronicler of that absurdity, not simply because of his gift for whimsy, but because that gift is accompanied by a feeling for the symbolic value of the strange. No cheap moralizer or allegorist, he nonetheless imbues his tales with awareness of the human yearning for companionship, purpose, clarity, and fulfillment. "The Expanding Woman," which like quite a few of these remarkable tales is previously unpublished, involves a battle between Klingon and Esperanto, an enormous cracked orbital mirror, and (surprise, surprise) an expanding woman, but it's also a melancholy meditation on the (dis)contents of futurism. Make no mistake: Link Arms With Toads! is hilarious reading, and can, if one so wishes, be taken simply as an entertainment. But it's also rewarding for those with higher expectations.
To do the book justice, a reviewer ought to describe and discuss each story, for this is hardly one of those collections in which every tale is like the others. But my limited store of superlative adjectives is already sorely depleted. How would I praise the ingenious plotting of the Poe-inspired "Pity the Pendulum," the parable-like irony of "333 and a Third" and "Discrepancy," the sheer bizarrerie of "Hell Toupee"? I suppose preterition will have to do. Rhys Hughes is a singular talent, and the fact that this and many of his other collections have been released by small presses should not be taken as a sign to the contrary. Like his wandering troubadours, he has talent, and ambition, on a greater scale:
"While we argue, debate, cajole, the waiter serves us all supper. We need to fortify ourselves for the tribulations ahead. But we must not be defiled. We are minstrels, the lyric poets of the garden cities. Music alone is the reason for our being, we require no other sustenance. In this particular cafe our needs are understood. Do not fret. We shall rebuild Carcassonne, we shall. Solemnly, in the sinister light that emanates from the charcoal ovens, we dine on manuscript stew and violin steaks and pick splinters from between our broken teeth."
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