From that, you can probably guess that I enjoyed this one.
I'd go so far as to say that this is an easy contender for best book of the year. Discovering writers like this is why I love reading so much.
I'd never heard of Will Elliott before a few weeks back when a friend on Facebook posted a recomendation. I thought it sounded interesting so ten minutes later I'd ordered it from a famous online bookstore.
The basic plot - Jamie is just your average guy trying to get by with a shitty job in a lousy neighbourhood and less than desirable housemates. On his way home in the early hours of the morning he witnesses a gruesome event involving three clowns, one of whom drops a small velvet bag. When Jamie takes the bag he finds his life becomes a lot more... interesting.
He is (slightly less than) cordially invited to audition as a clown himself. Not having any choice in the matter, he does so and passes. He then finds himself working for the weirdest circus I've encountered in fiction.
This place makes the big top in Ramsey Campbell's The Grin of the Dark seem completely normal. At least the big top section in that just feels like a bad trip. The Pilo circus is a brilliantly realised location, filled with freaks and strange creatures, magicians and fortune tellers. You can almost smell the sawdust and the smoke. It's location is somewhere not earthbound so poor Jamie is as stuck as it's possible to be.
At no point in this book did I have any idea where the totally insane storyline was going. The clowns are by turns hilarious and terrifyingly violent. The rest of the circus characters are no more pleasant.
The writing is pretty straightforward but occasionally throws in a bon mot or two. It has a very visual feel to it and I raced through this in the brief slices of time I've had available for reading this past week.
Why this didn't make Elliott a household name I don't know. I do know that it won a few awards the year it was published, and they were well deserved.
I've already ordered the sequel - The Pilo Travelling Show - and will probably be reading that in the next few weeks.
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