Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the Rabbit Hole

Juan Pablo Villalobos

(Translated by Rosalind Harvey)

Down the Rabbit Hole is narrated by Tochtli, son of a Mexican drug lord. Tochtli lives in a palace, has a collection of hats, and is either a genius or just very odd. And right now, more than anything else, Tochtli wants a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. (Watch this video and you'll want one too) Tochtli may not get to go to school, or have any friends his own age, or remember his mother, but what money can buy he gets.

This is the story of Tochtli's quest to obtain a pygmy hippo. Somehow Down the Rabbit Hole is enchanting, bleak, funny and depressing all at once. Tochtli is a fantastic protagonist, better I would argue, than Jack in Room (Emma Donoghue) or Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon). The voice is consistent and believable and the plot doesn't suffer from the child narrator. The short length of Down the Rabbit Hole doesn't detract from the quality of writing and, if anything, adds to the pace of the novel. I've also been reliably informed that the translation is excellent.
I loved this book. Really, really loved it. It's the kind of book which you won't forget quickly and will want to recommend to all your friends. I'm not the only person who thought that either. Down the Rabbit Hole has been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award 2011 and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. It's also a really lovely book in terms of design, and well worth the £10 RRP.

Buy it here from www.waterstones.com or from your local bookshop.

Down the Rabbit Hole is published by And Other Stories, a grass-roots independent publishers. Do check out their website and their other publications.

Care of Wooden Floors

Care of Wooden Floors

Will Wiles

Care of Wooden Floors is Will Wiles' debut novel. (Not that you can tell that it’s a debut.) It's slick, clever, and very very funny.  The main character remains nameless throughout the novel, which adds, rather than detracts to the charm of the book.

Our hapless protagonist is invited to house-sit for his university friend, Oskar. Oskar is a successful composer, an organised man, happy and in control of his life. His flat is pristine and perfectly put together with expensive leather sofas, well-behaved cats and, of course, the faultlessly polished, extortionately priced wooden floors. On the contrary, our narrator is disorganised, messy and rather aimless.

Our narrator arrives anticipating a brief break in which he can relax and devote himself to writing his magnum opus. And his holiday would’ve been the quiet and productive experience he’d expected if he’d been a different man entirely- perhaps a similar character to the man whose house he was supposed to be looking after. But our narrator was not his host, Oskar- and this is where the problems begin.

Oskar, although absent from the flat, makes his presence felt with a series of exacting instructions on how to properly look after his property. Notes are placed in the most unexpected places- so the finding of the commands becomes a bizarre treasure hunt. By far the most detailed of the notes is the instruction on how to care for wooden floors. Our narrator thinks he will have no need for this information, until he spills red wine onto the kitchen floorboards. This disaster is only the first of many.

It is the sort of book which makes you squirm as you read. You become so aware of the inevitable destruction of Oskar’s perfect home that you wish to scream at the narrator, telling him to stop before it’s too late. Alas, your voice is not heard.

And, actually, you don’t want the narrator to stop at all. You want to read about the nightmarish quality that house-sitting has attained, you’re desperate to find out how on earth the narrator is going to get out of the mess of his own creation, and you need to find out whether Oskar is human, or some form of omniscient being.

Give it a read. You know you want to. 

Buy it here from www.waterstones.com or from your local bookshop.

Many thanks to the fabulous HarperInsider for the reading copy.