Review by Ian Keogh

There’s always a melancholic air to Louis’ activities, and the unsettling cover to The Clown’s Last Words, indeed the very title, hardly indicates happy times ahead. The events of Lying to Clive weigh heavily, and while Louis enjoys the companionship of FC, there’s a disconnection as they can’t communicate, while his malicious neighbours the Quidnuncs forever plot additional torments.

Among these is the continued dangled hope of Louis meeting his Aunt Alison. Louis is unaware she’s a fictional construct of his neighbours, so when the sinister administration demands compulsory attendance at a Fun Day Out he thinks he’s finally going to meet her.

Although the rounded figures and pastel locations are drawn to approximate cheery children’s books, the prevailing mood is claustrophobic, confinement and constant repression. Even cinema entertainment is policed, with people battered into returning to their strictly allocated seats. There are also what could be seen as allegories concerning social anxiety. It’s not only FC with whom Louis has difficulty communicating, being unable to verbalise his feelings. This is in a scene that switches to absurdism, as in Hamlet people are encouraged to confess to their gas-masked interrogators by being subjected to the smells of strong cheese. If that doesn’t work, the tickling begins.

Metaphrog may lack sentimentality, but there is some small element of hope for Louis. Here, in addition to the possibility of meeting Aunt Alison, it’s the comfort he derives from his own creation Learner Hedgehog, whose adventures he fantasises about. Contrarily, cruel laughs are derived from from the demented antics and responses of the Quidnuncs, mad by any standards.

With all this going on it might be some while before you notice the absence of any clown in The Clown’s Last Words. Don’t become too hung up on that. Is it part of the ongoing joke that they’re only of relevance for an almost separate diversion just before the end? It’s rather an elusive ending for this book, but then what you might presume to have happened doesn’t unless there’s been a reset for Dreams Never Die.