Candescent Blooms

Andrew Hook has had over a hundred and fifty short stories published, with several novels, novellas and collections also in print. Stories have appeared in magazines ranging from Ambit to Interzone. Recent books are a collection of mostly SF stories, Frequencies of Existence, and O For Obscurity, Or, The Story of N, a fictionalised biography of the Mysterious N Senada written in collaboration with the legendary San Francisco art collective, The Residents.

★★★★★ Andrew Hook’s book is a gothic treat. I only wish he’d investigated and imagined the fast exit of Mike Todd, one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, whose private plane blew up over New Mexico; or the drowning – homicide or otherwise – of Natalie Wood; or the fate of Gig Young, who shot his wife and then himself in Manhattan. Perhaps there will be a sequel, or a continuation. In particular, I much admired the heightened poetic style, which wholly fits the subject-matter. We are told about “Benny Goodman’s treacle-swing”; there are Chandleresque phrases such as someone or other emitting “a soft bubble of hostility”; and Hook is capable of epigrams worthy of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, eg, “Guilt would be bearable, but innocence corrupts the soul.” Marvellous.