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Fiction: From the 101 very short stories in his first book, Anthropology, to the slightly longer short stories in his second book, Don't Tell Me The Truth About Love, Dan Rhodes has now worked himself up to a novel. Fans of earlier work, though, won't be disappointed: it's episodic, writes Ian Sansom.

Timoleon Vieta is a dog, a mongrel, with eyes "as pretty as a little girl's". His owner, Carthusians Cockroft, lives alone in the Italian countryside.Cockroft is an English eccentric abroad, a self-styled "conductor, composer, raconteur", whose work includes Wrens, a musical "about a good-hearted but misguided scientist who was secretly breeding killer wrens the size of emperor penguins in his underground laboratory". His music for the television programme, Bibbly and the Bobblies, was made "by taperecording his farts and belches". His great classical work, Rape of the Seas, "had foundered after he was offered salmon at a dinner party."