Book review: Hong Kong Gothic, anthology
The Hong Kong Writers Circle is a 23-year-old group for aspiring authors, and exhibits its best work in themed annual collections of short stories and poems. These anthologies are largely entertaining, often portray Hong Kong in a different light, and usually identify the city's best creative talent.
edited by Kate Hawkins, Edmund Price and Marnie Walker
Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Writers Circle is a 23-year-old group for aspiring authors, and exhibits its best work in themed annual collections of short stories and poems. These anthologies are largely entertaining, often portray Hong Kong in a different light, and usually identify the city's best creative talent.
Not all the circle's productions succeed, however. Last year's anthology, , suffered from loose writing and loose editing. So some readers might shiver at the prospect of the group's latest, .
Such concerns are unfounded: the circle has listened to its critics and channelled its talent into a popular horror theme, producing its best stocking-filler in years. is entertaining, largely thanks to the no-nonsense editing of Kate Hawkins, Edmund Price and Marnie Walker. They have run the best stories first, cut the poetry and made the circle seem less "luvvy" and more fun.
Such changes have lifted several writers to their true potential. Ian Greenfield has abandoned the smutty puns of last year's collection to open with the gripping . His descriptions of sounds on ceilings and views through doorholes reveal the isolation of Hong Kong flat life. Then he drags readers through staccato text to a taut conclusion.
Sophia Greengrass' maintains the momentum with the mounting of stuffed birds and Hitchcockian tension in a little shop in Sheung Wan, while Marnie Walker's gripping unearths the cultural insecurities of a mixed-race couple in Sai Kung, and the inexplicable events in their village house after a hike to Sha Kok Mei.
Several authors lead country walkers into trouble. Marc Magnee's grisly images add the ooze of the wet market to , while Véronique Jonassen proves the success of a simple storyline and concise character background in her thrilling .
Joy Al-Sofi festers the tension in , about a woman sensing weirdness in a To Kwa Wan flat. Anjali Mittal ratchets domestic bliss and commercial success into the panic of flight in , while Juan Miguel Sevilla brings whiffs of adultery and the occult to Discovery Bay in .
Bernardette Santo Domingo's stark examines the perceptions and consequences of wife-beating in Sai Wan Ho, while Nancy Leung crafts a sensitive study of bereavement in her exquisite .
Meanwhile, C.M. John races pulses with his imaginative , which releases supernatural forces in a housing estate. The chills are subtler in Elizabeth Solomon's and Flora Qian's , but two F-bombs in the first four words mar Vaughan Rapatahana's otherwise enjoyable .
makes fine holiday reading.
