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My Rabbit's Shadow Looks Like a Hand
A novella that makes use of playful experimental techniques to tell the strange story of an entertainer who specialises in creating rabbits from shadows. He creates twelve special shadow rabbits who communicate with him via stories and poems. These twelve narratives are set in a frame by another story and it turns out that this framing story is also potentially framed in a much larger cosmos. My Rabbit's Shadow Looks Like a Hand is a fantasy tale, a romance, and an example of philosophical speculative fiction with a humorous slant.
80 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2020
2 people want to read
About the author
Rhys Hughes
335 books323 followersA writer of Speculative Fiction who uses fantasy and comedy to explore unusual concepts. Known for his original ideas, intricate plots, love of paradox, and entertaining wordplay.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 22, 2022
‘The shadow of a human is a hand, the hand of a different being’ - Delightful musings!
Handsome Welsh author Rhys Hughes possesses one of the most richly imaginative minds of any contemporary writer. His ability to create stories that at first appear grounded in realism only to explode into fantasy is matched only by his own creations where surrealism is written to be read as fact, as the development of a cast of characters and an idea are so completely credible that his eventual hints or injections of reality take the reader totally by surprise. But while many writers are able to delve into the interstices of fantasy fiction and populate their pages with created names of people and places that eventually tire the reader, Hughes instead remains the articulate wordsmith: no matter the story, the quality of writing is so fine that simply turning each page is a pleasure for the mind. He currently lives in Swansea, UK.
Every reader has favorite authors and likely this reader’s affinity for Rhys Hughes is shared by many others. This collection of stories ‘centers’ around shadow pictures, or as Rhys states, ‘I had been entertaining the children of several friends at a dinner party by casting the shadows of various animals on a wall. To make each animal I contorted my hands and the smoky yellow bulb of an old electric lamp did the rest of the work. It’s a trick that many can do, but it was more in my youth than it is now. Fashions come an go, but animals are always popular, even when they are no more than silhouettes on a flat surface…’ In his inimitable manner, Rhys relates these stories from the vantage of both the human creator - the hands - and the creation - the shadow creature, offering moments of poetic execution along with short, pungent tales (?tails?), and the result is one of the more entertaining and insightful considerations of who we are and how we react. ‘Who is to say that we ourselves aren’t simply the projections of the hands of beings from another dimension?’ Rhys Hughes projects his weird and wonderful tales on the screens of our wacky world, and somehow that makes everything make better sense. His prose is a celebration of the English language. He is a complete pleasure – and deserves a much broader reading audience!
Handsome Welsh author Rhys Hughes possesses one of the most richly imaginative minds of any contemporary writer. His ability to create stories that at first appear grounded in realism only to explode into fantasy is matched only by his own creations where surrealism is written to be read as fact, as the development of a cast of characters and an idea are so completely credible that his eventual hints or injections of reality take the reader totally by surprise. But while many writers are able to delve into the interstices of fantasy fiction and populate their pages with created names of people and places that eventually tire the reader, Hughes instead remains the articulate wordsmith: no matter the story, the quality of writing is so fine that simply turning each page is a pleasure for the mind. He currently lives in Swansea, UK.
Every reader has favorite authors and likely this reader’s affinity for Rhys Hughes is shared by many others. This collection of stories ‘centers’ around shadow pictures, or as Rhys states, ‘I had been entertaining the children of several friends at a dinner party by casting the shadows of various animals on a wall. To make each animal I contorted my hands and the smoky yellow bulb of an old electric lamp did the rest of the work. It’s a trick that many can do, but it was more in my youth than it is now. Fashions come an go, but animals are always popular, even when they are no more than silhouettes on a flat surface…’ In his inimitable manner, Rhys relates these stories from the vantage of both the human creator - the hands - and the creation - the shadow creature, offering moments of poetic execution along with short, pungent tales (?tails?), and the result is one of the more entertaining and insightful considerations of who we are and how we react. ‘Who is to say that we ourselves aren’t simply the projections of the hands of beings from another dimension?’ Rhys Hughes projects his weird and wonderful tales on the screens of our wacky world, and somehow that makes everything make better sense. His prose is a celebration of the English language. He is a complete pleasure – and deserves a much broader reading audience!
Displaying 1 of 1 review