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THE PILO FAMILY CIRCUS
by Will Elliott
Quercus, January 2007
320 pages
10.99 GBP
ISBN: 1847240216


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I always wanted to run away and join the circus. But if it’s anything like the crazy world in Will Elliott's THE PILO FAMILY CIRCUS, I'm staying put, thanks!

This is one bonkers book. Jamie's a young Aussie guy working as a concierge in a Brisbane hotel. He's a mild-mannered bloke whose mad housemates ride roughshod over him. Then, one day on the way home from work, he nearly runs over a clown. It soon becomes apparent that the blighters are stalking him – and they want him as one of them. He's got two days to pass his audition. And they don't take no for an answer.

I always thought clowns were faintly sinister, and this book more than proves me right. Once Jamie puts the greasepaint on and becomes JJ, he's a different person – and JJ is out to kill him. And he's got no idea how he can escape from this ancient and sinister circus.

Elliott has a tumbling, over-wrought mind based on this showing! The book is peopled by picaresque grotesques, not least the clowns, led by leader Gonko. And the circus is a battleground with the clowns at odds with the acrobats and where violence seems to erupt out of nowhere. Overseeing it all are dysfunctional brothers Kurt and George, who seem to think up ever more inventive ways to bump the other off

The start of the book is deeply weird but grabs the reader from the start. So it really didn't need that example of annoying and lazy writing, where an author goes down the "had he but known" route. Elliott does that at virtually the end of every chapter in the first section – losing these sentences would have ramped up the tension perfectly well.

Think Angela Carter crossed with Chuck Pahluniak crossed with Carl Hiassen and you might be someone near. Maybe. This isn't an obvious book to categorise, and there's no point in even trying. You'll either love it or hate it. I loved it, and was delighted to find a writer as endlessly inventive as Elliott.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, February 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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