A Flowering Wound

by John Howard

Two of the stories in this collection by John Howard have their setting in a certain west London suburb—the calm prospect of its small houses and tree-lined roads is deceptive. And throughout this selection of stories, whether in outer London or hyperinflationary Berlin, Romania in the febrile 1930s, or the austerity Britain of recent years, we encounter people who live on the peripheries of their cities and societies—and at the edge of their own lives and illusions. They might think they know the rules, but it often turns out they do not, after all. Or perhaps the rules changed—silently, abruptly. In these stories past and present come together with wounding consequences for those caught out by the system—or its absence.

Genres: Fiction

181 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2019

About the author

John Howard was born in London. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and the collections The Silver Voices (2010), Written by Daylight (2013), and Cities and Thrones and Powers (2013). The majority of his stories have central and eastern European settings; many are set in the fictional Romanian town of Steaua de Munte. The Defeat of Grief (2010) is a novella set in Steaua de Munte and the real Black Sea resort of Balcic; Numbered as Sand or the Stars (2012) attempts a 'secret history' of Hungary between the World Wars.

Between 2003 and 2007 John Howard collaborated on eight short stories with Mark Valentine, six of which featured Valentine’s long-running series character The Connoisseur, an occult detective whose real name is never revealed. All 23 tales of The Connoisseur, including the collaborations, were reprinted in The Collected Connoisseur (2010).

Secret Europe (2012) is a collection jointly written with Mark Valentine comprising 25 short stories set in a variety of real and fictional European locations. Ten of the stories are by Howard and fifteen by Valentine.

John Howard has written articles for numerous magazines including Book and Magazine Collector, Supernatural Tales, Wormwood, Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, and All Hallows. He contributed essays to the Fritz Leiber special issue of Fantasy Commentator (No. 57/58, 2004) and to the books Black Prometheus: A Critical Study of Karl Edward Wagner (2007), Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008), and The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch (2009), all edited by Benjamin Szumskyj.

John Howard also wrote the introduction to the Ash-Tree Press edition of Francis Brett Young’s classic 1924 horror novel Cold Harbour (2007).

Reviews

[Karl]

This hardcover is numbered 34 of 100 of the numbered copies produced of a total print run limited to 300 copies.

Contents:

007 - "A Glimpse of the City"
028 - "Portrait in an Unfaded Photograph"
048 - "The Golden Mile"
062 - "Falling into Stone"
076 - "Ziegler Against the World"
102 - "A Flowering Wound"
110 - "We, the Rescued"
134 - "The Man Ahead"
147 - "Twilight of the Airships"
168 - "Under the Sun"
187 - Acknowledgements

[Mat Joiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in John Howard's new collection range back and forth across three centuries of European history; but these mayn't be histories we are familiar with. We discover a new chapter in the early life of Gustav Meyrink, author of "The Golem"; two airships meet in the skies of Howard's fictional Romanian city, Steaua de Munte. In Berlin, hyperinflationary banknotes spark a recurring nightmare, and an English emigre encounters ghosted photographs. A West London suburb inspires both dreams of escape and homecoming. There are ghosts here, but currency and architecture are likely to be the instruments of haunting. The protagonists are seekers, looking for love, friendship, something beyond their world. An elegantly written book, by turns moving, haunting, humorous. Highly recommended (though I must admit to being a little biased; the author is a good friend and I'm the book's dedicatee)!

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wandering the streets and this story’s description of the nature of developed London suburbs, like a new Machen. As if accompanied by a Proustian self. It is utterly magical, but I don’t know how, because it is so plainly, if elegantly, adumbrated by the text. His meeting of a man called David… I won’t say any more; the story itself leaves much unsaid, even unhinted. There is certainly some real magic here as I often find with this author’s work – a truly incredible serendipity or synchronicity because half an hour before reading this story I happened to read the first chapter of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass’

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.