A Spectral Hue

I stumbled on this book while looking for horror titles that held art (in any form) as a focus, and I'm so glad I did. Gidney's prose does such gorgeous justice to the ways in which art can mean life as well as danger, be transportive as well as passion-inducing and life-saving, and even, yes, be a haunting. This is such a sneaky book--it moves almost casually, and with the way all of the characters come to life, it's easy to fall into the book and forget there's anything supernatural, those elements of the book seem so natural to the characters and life in this book. But that's part of the beauty of it--Gidney has brought to life a world in which haunting isn't something we've seen before in quite this way, and yet it and the show more characters feel as if they're a view into what it might very well look like in this strange world we live in. There's a reality to the book that I wasn't expecting.

I do wish it had been a lot longer, and taken readers even deeper than it does, but I'm so appreciative to have discovered this little book. Absolutely recommended, especially to those readers whose passions engage them in art of any form. show less

A lyrical page-turner that only gets better as it goes along. Timely and timeless. Yes, the speculative fiction classification is accurate, but if it were up to me I'd say never mind what genre(s) it is, I'm shelving it under the heading Great American Novel.

Recommended in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2021/01/18/new-year-who-dis/