This Is Life - Couverture souple

'The funniest, most romantic book Dan Rhodes has ever written. It's full of zest and joy and art and Paris. Only to be read if you enjoy happiness' Jenny Colgan

'My favourite writer who isn't dead' Stewart Lee

'Dan Rhodes is a true original, with a fresh, funny, quirky style that seems to owe nothing to other writers and everything to his own powers of invention' Hilary Mantel

'Wonderfully unpredictable' Alan Carr

'A literary treasure' Louis de Bernieres

'This is the mad-yet-logical world of Dan Rhodes, possibly Britain's most idiosyncratic writer.. delightfully unique' Kate Saunders, The Times

'His novel is not a mockery of the chick-lit genre, even if it is aware of the narrative conventions of the genre and takes gentle pot-shots every now and then. It simply takes a popular formula and gives it a very welcome edge. Superb' Lesley McDowell, The Scotsman

'This is Life is a true melange of talk, action, lust and performance art...the novel has many charms' Daneet Steffens, The Independent on Sunday

'The wit is spot-on, the writing immaculate, the atmosphere so French you can smell the Gauloises...I loved it' Wendy Holden, Daily Mail

'A reminder of how strange ordinary life is and it challenges us to "adjust to the darkness"'Michael Holroyd, The Guardian

'Rhodes has enormous fun here, sending up the intellectual onanism of the visual arts world in conspicuously clean, plain prose while also embracing the romantic mythology of his Parisian setting' Claire Allfree, Metro

'Dan Rhodes's heavily quirky, warmly improbable feel-good novel is romantic and satirical by turns, with a serious, sentimental core' Phil Baker, Sunday Times

'It is irresistible: quality froth infused with restrained comic irony, some very nice touches of dark humour and one or two genuinely arresting moments' Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph

'Whether it's a novel about life imitating art or the other way around, Rhodes, like Le Machine, has managed to bottle something of both' --Emma Hagestadt, Independent

In Paris, art student Aurélie Renard throws a stone and sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down.

Suddenly finding herself in sole charge of a stranger's baby, and with no idea how babies work, it's only thanks to the help of her adoring professor and her gun-toting heartbreaker of a best friend that Aurélie Renard is able to navigate her way through the most extraordinary and calamitous seven days of her life.

Meanwhile, in a Pigalle cinema, a naked man is doing his best to show the people of Paris, Aurélie among them, what it means to be alive . . .