If you understand the "six degrees of separation" concept, also known as the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, that is what this review is about. We have a little book here entitled Ornaments in Jade that was published by Tartarus Press in conjunction with Caerman Books on the centenary of its original publication.

The stories, better described as prose poems, are lively and weird. Eerie and sometimes horrible. There were only 350 copies printed in 1997. My copy has a bookplate by the late [a:Roger Dobson|178955|Roger Dobson|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] in it (look him up sometime).

There is a nice little introduction by [a:Barry Humphries|83219|Barry Humphries|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1307764738p2/83219.jpg]. So what? Well Barry Humphries is none other than Dame Edna Everage and Australian parliamentarian Sir Les Patterson. Look them up. Now we have Arthur Machen connected to Ringo Starr, Robin Williams, Whoppi Goldberg, Sharon Osborne, and everyone else Dame Edna ever "interviewed."

So the next time someone asks you what [b:The Hill of Dreams|19467281|The Hill of Dreams (Library of Wales)|Arthur Machen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387055371s/19467281.jpg|2958815] has to do with Mork & Mindy, well, you can tell 'em. ( )

An interesting collection of short pieces of fiction, originally published in 1924 and reprinted in 2018 by Snuggly Books, a small press that seems to specialise in "decadent" writing and is oddly coy about telling us where it's based.

All the pieces seem to work in much the same way, with a representation of a solitary character in either a rural or a London setting that gradually shifts away from realistic description to hint at the presence of something (or more properly, "Something") terrible that is just at the edge of our perception. Machen never quite commits himself as to what the terrible thing really is, he just entices us up to the edge of the cliff and leaves us there, wondering whether there really is a yawning chasm in front of us. Lovely writing, but I think you have to be in the mood for it. ( )