As is my usual practice when I’ve finished work on a Saturday, I called in to my local Waterstones this afternoon to have a quick pursue, before catching the bus just outside to go home.

I didn’t have any intention of buying anything, as I’m off to go see Explosions in the Sky on Tuesday and was keeping any spare cash for that, but then I saw this little beauty on the shelves, and that plan went out of the window! And it wasn’t partially cheap either at £10 for a little 88 page book.

However, I loved the only other book I’ve read by Kaufman, All My Friends are Superheroes, and this was just a gorgeous looking book (illustrated throughout with some wonderful silhouette illustrations by Tom Percival), there was never any doubt I was going to buy it!

The book opens with a bank robbery. But a bank robbery with a difference. The purple hatted bank robber isn’t after money, nor anything from the bank. But the item with the most sentimental value, each person in the bank has on them.

It turns out that the robber has taken more than just objects and the consequences for the bank’s staff and patrons will be strange and bizarre, and there lives could depend on how they handle them.

A lion tattoo leaps off the owners leg and proceeds to chase her across the city, another’s husband turns into a snowman, yet another wakes up to find herself made of candy… And the wife referred to in the title, wakes each morning to discover she is shrinking each night by ever-increasing increments.

Pause now to watch the book’s trailer:

With a plot like that, it would be so easy for it to be a train-wreck in less capable hands, but Kaufman hits the perfect balance between surreal and a matter-of-factness that never questions the weirdness of what is going on. It is also at its heart a tale about a husband and wife trying to find their way back to each other.

Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, and it remains tender even when horrible things are happening. It was worth every penny of the £10 cover price.

It’s books like this that make reading such a joy sometimes.

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Buy: The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman from The Book Depository
(Currently on offer at £5! 21/01/12)