You'll Catch Your Death

Boyd Holmes is an editor at Dundurn Press.

The three chequered decades of Hugh Hood’s literary career have seen
books that range from the rushed (Unsupported Assertions, 1991) to the
flat (The Motor Boys in Ottawa, 1986) to the good (Flying a Red Kite,
1962). Even with his best work, however, one wonders whether, if the
prolific Hood were to write less, he might also write better.

That said, I am pleased to report that You’ll Catch Your Death,
Hood’s 10th collection of short fiction and first book of original
stories since August Nights (1985), is one of his best works. Throughout
most of the 13 stories, Hood’s characteristically allegorical prose is
elegant and skilfully sculpted; indeed, all but one piece would benefit
from the same sharp critical scrutiny that Robert Lecker gave “Looking
Down from Above” in On the Line (1982). (The exception is “Getting
Funding,” an essay in disguise. This hilarious item has already found
a more suitable home in John Metcalf’s 1988 anthology of nonfiction
broadsides, Carry on Bumping.) Arguably the most effective stories are
“Deanna and the Ayatollah” (a finely structured and darkly comic
echo of Nadine Gordimer’s “Not for Publication”) and “Hot
Cockatoos,” with its final, unforgettable image of escaping birds.
(Birds are a fascinating recurring motif throughout the collection.)
However, the quality of this book is tempered by an occasional
didacticism, such as in the last sentence of “Disappearing Creatures
of Various Kinds.”

You’ll Catch Your Death is recommended, but when compared to such
classic story collections as Winner Take Nothing and Everything That
Rises Must Converge, it pales.