The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman

In three words:

Tiny, quirky, sweet

 

What I thought:

A tiny story in a tiny book about a tiny wife. This novella is less than 100 pages long, but what you get for that is a weird and wonderful little story that starts off in a bank. A robber (dressed rather flambouyantly in purple and feathers) enters and holds the queue up at gunpoint and asks each person in the line to hand over the thing with the most sentimental value to them. Once he has got something from each of them he disappears after telling them that he has taken a portion of each of their souls.

Over the coming days and weeks, bizarre things start to happen to those who were in line at the bank that day including one woman discovering she is made of candy and her husband eats her all up, and another one who has a tattoo of a lion on her leg which suddenly comes alive and starts chasing her all over town. I love the fact that the book has illustrations in it too which makes it all the more fairytale-like.

The Tiny Wife is so called after the main character who, after the bank episode, finds herself shrinking slightly each day – but will she disappear altogether?

Verdict: Fun, cute, quirky and well worth a read.

(Source: I received my copy of this book for review from The Friday Project – an imprint of Harper Collins)