Candescent Blooms by Andrew Hook

Candescent Blooms by Andrew Hook

Shortlisted for Best Collection in the British Fantasy Awards 2023 Candescent Blooms is a collection of twelve short stories which form fictionalised biographies of mostly Golden Era Hollywood actors who suffered untimely deaths. From Olive Thomas in 1920 through to Grace Kelly in 1982, these pieces utilise facts, fiction, gossip, movies and unreliable memories to examine the life of each individual character set against a Hollywood background of hope and corruption, opportunity and reality.

★★★★★ Andrew Hook’s book is a gothic treatI 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.

-- Roger Lewis * The Telegraph *

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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781784632564
ISBN 10	1784632562
Title	Candescent Blooms
Author	Andrew Hook
Series	Salt Modern Stories
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Salt Publishing
Year published	2022-10-15
Number of pages	208
Prizes	Short-listed for British Fantasy Awards 2023 (UK)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.