Dan Rhodes' Hilarious Rage Against Publishing by Andrew Crofts

When writers get to the stage of writing fiction about the problems of writers, it is generally a sign that the time has come for them to get out more.

 Dan Rhodes, however, is so monumentally pissed off with everything to do with publishing, and so good at writing comedy, that his new novel, “Sour Grapes”, published by Eye Books, is fantastic.

Every gripe that writers vent to one another about publishers, publishing, literary festivals, money (or lack of it), and the pretentions or inadequacies of other writers, is given the full comic treatment.

 Publishing’s greatest renaissance man, Scott Pack, acquired the book for Eye Books, claiming that it is his swan song as a publisher, partly because he is as tired of the whole game as Rhodes himself. What a book to go out on.

Some of it is outright farce, like the very best of Wodehouse or Waugh, while beneath the surface the author’s boiling fury has been honed into ice picks of satire, the targets of which anyone who has laboured to make a living from writing will instantly recognise.

 The result is an absolute hoot.