Sour Grapes by Dan Rhodes Review

A quiet village in the English countryside becomes the unwitting vortex for international espionage, shady corporations’ plans, billionaire’s balloon-popping antics, incel romance… and a literary festival. And all because the lady loves Milk Tray Dan Rhodes has some gripes about the book world!

Dan Rhodes revisits a familiar template he used in his earlier novel When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow for Sour Grapes wherein he presents a mid-level celebrity in an unflattering light as they struggle a bit with life in the English countryside in a village with “Bottom” in the name (I know this as the only other Dan Rhodes novel I have read is coincidentally that book, despite Rhodes having written several more). Last time it was Professor Richard Dawkins and this time it’s Will Self - and like When the Professor…, Sour Grapes isn’t a bad novel.

Rhodes (legally - probably?) covers himself by tweaking the name slightly to Wilberforce Selfram in an appropriately long-winded name for a writer known for his lugubriously Sesquipedalian speech using unnecessarily complicated words in place of simpler ones. And it’s quite a humorous portrayal, especially if you’re familiar with Self’s appearance/manner. Rhodes has him eating slugs and hanging out in publishing houses’ backrooms (along with another cleverly disguised writer, Johann Hari, here presented as Harry Johannes) pitifully waiting for any kind of public appearance engagement.

Why Will Self (or the Dawk for that matter)? No idea. Maybe Rhodes has had some run-ins with him and decided he’d give him the business the only way he knows how. Although, while Rhodes’ Selfram is mocked throughout, he does come off quite likeably towards the end, even acting heroically once, so it’s not a total character assassination.

Other (vastly more famous) authors don’t come off quite so well with JK Rowling presented as a one-dimensional money-grubbing villain and Salman Rushdie as a status-obsessed creep. To his credit, Rhodes doesn’t leave himself out either, breaking the fourth wall to knock his own non-fame in the rather drawn-out final chapter as well as in the cartoonish publishing house chapters (he also points out that this novel bears a resemblance to his Dawkins story).

For a novel framed as a cosy narrative about a book festival in a rural setting, a number of elements you’d expect to see in a Lee Child novel get thrown in. Rhodes includes Russian interference in the west, energy companies’ collusion with the government, and murder most foul. Some of it keeps the narrative interesting while other elements (the fracking) are dealt with in such a silly manner that it makes their inclusion seem pointless and makes the overall novel feel too farcical. Ditto the way publishing houses are presented as Satanic cults - for all Rhodes’ imagination, his choice to show publishers like this felt uncreative and dull.

Sour Grapes is a mix of things that are successfully compelling (every time Selfram, Mrs Brushicini and Mara showed up, the cancel culture commentary, the Rushdie cameo) and others that aren’t (the incel romance, the publishing houses’ dark ceremonies, Selfram’s secret revealed). At times, the book drags and I felt like it could’ve done with some editing - removing some of those elements that bogged the story down, like the energy company stuff - to pick up the pace a bit. It’s a well-written and accessible book but it’s also a little too leisurely in its telling a bit too often.

Still, if you enjoy gently humorous stories along the tonal lines of Terry Pratchett and Ben Elton, Dan Rhodes’ Sour Grapes, and When The Professor Got Stuck in the Snow for that matter, are both worth checking out for easy, lightly amusing reads.