{review} the tiny wife

Andrew Kaufman The Tiny Wife (2011)

On Thursday 22nd February, one day after the robbery, Jennifer Layone was searching underneath the couch for the remote control when she found God. He looked almost exactly like she’d expected him to look – long white beard, robe, sandals, the whole thing. But he was very dirty. It was dusty underneath her couch, and since she was doing laundry anyway, she took him with her to the laundromat. Jennifer put him in a washing machine. She was running low on quarters, so she washed him with a load of jeans. She must have forgotten to check the pockets because when she took God out of the washing machine, he was covered with little bits of Kleenex. This disappointed God. He wouldn’t look Jennifer in the eyes and he left the laundromat without saying goodbye. Now she was no closer to God than she’d been before the robbery.

I'm not going to say much about The Tiny Wife as it is both so short and so wonderfully whimsical that any description is going to involve huge spoilers: in brief, a group of people are present during a bank robbery in which they all lose something important to themselves. And then very strange things start to happen...

This is a quirky, sparkly little book - and a love story and modern fairytale - and should probably have made it onto my favourites of 2011.

Rating: 10/10.

If you liked this… I was reminded of less mythologically rich Neil Gaiman (that's not a bad thing!)