My Book Of Revelations by Iain Hood

 

My Book of Revelations by Iain Hood.

Published 27th September by Renard Press.

From the cover of the book:

The countdown to the millennium has begun, and people are losing their heads. 

A so-called Y2K expert gives a presentation to Scotland's eccentric Tech Laird T.S. Mole's entourage in Edinburgh, and soon long hours, days, weeks and months fill with seemingly chaotic and frantic work on the 'bug problem'. 

Soon enough it'll be just minutes and seconds to go to midnight. Is the world about to end, or will everyone just wake up the next day with the same old New Year's Day hangover? 

A book about what we know and don't know, about how we communicate and fail to, My Book of Revelations moves from historical revelations to the personal, and climaxes in the bang and flare of fireworks, exploding myths and offering a glimpse of a scandal that will rock Scotland into the twenty-first century. 

As embers fall silently to earth, all that is left to say is: Are we working in the early days of a better nation?

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I think it is fair to preface this review with the statement that Iain Hood's work is incredibly difficult to sum up in a few words, but I am going to have a stab at explaining why his funky, oft stream of consciousness, experimental narrative style is very much worth your time...

Hood's third book, My Book of Revelations, revolves around the notion that humankind has the circular propensity to foretell its doom, and to revel in the idea that the end is nigh. Beginning with a fascinating journey through the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and the establishment of time zones across the globe, Hood then really gets going into the weird events surrounding the mania that the world would end as the clock ticked over into a new millennium at the birth of the year 2000.

In the run-up to the zero hour of New Year's Eve 1999, talk abounds that the mysterious Y2K bug will bring civilisation to its knees, which you will surely remember if you are old enough. Something must be done to save us all from our doom, and Hood brings forth a knight in shining armour in Edinburgh to take up the quest on behalf of Scotland's tech giant T.S. Mole, head of Molestrix. Said knight, who remains largely unnamed (I was not quite sure of the accuracy behind a single ironic mention of a company email address) talks his way into the job of ensuring that Molestrix's systems are safe from the dreaded bug - except the problem is he has done so with the help of his genius friend Patrick, and he has no idea how to do the wonders he has promised.

What follows is a darkly comic chain of events in which our knight must be seen to be working hard at his task, when what he is actually doing is requesting ever more expensive hardware that he has read about in FHM, which he uses to surf the flourishing world of internet shopping and think up catchy titles for the short stories he will never write. The weeks, days, and hours are counting down, but as long as our hero seems to be working himself to the point of exhaustion, even the astronomical hardware bill eventually gets approved without comment. There are lots of chuckles to be had here if you work, or indeed live with, anyone who works in tech, but there is a poignant undercurrent of loneliness pervading this part of the book on the part of our hero which is rather melancholy too.

This is where things get a bit strange. Hood suddenly changes tack, a he is wont to do, with a bizarre section detailing an email thread between our hero and his friend Patrick... at least mibby it is? He then follows this by a surreal masterstroke of epic proportions with deep and meaningful conversations between Muriel Spark and Jean Cocteau, and reflections on Scottish independence... you have to be there really. The whole complicated, challenging with charm, piece ends up back with our knight - but I leave you to discover how he fares. 

If you like your books to have a well defined structure, then this is not for you. Hood's ideas of beginning, middle and end are unconventional to say the least. However, if you are up for some satire that ambles through space, time, and the human condition, then there are nuggets of gold in them thar Scottish hills. I especially enjoyed how Hood uses counting up and down to the potentially apocalyptic New Year's Eve night, and the way he explores ideas about a better world. I also loved his highly nostalgic visit to the 1980s, and the thread around the small-but-mighty purple genius, Prince himself, and his timeless song 1999.

Push your boundaries, go with the flow, and enjoy something a little bit different that is curiously both playful and profound... I give you Iain Hood.

My Book of Revelations is available to buy now in paperback. You can support indie publishing by buying direct from Renard Press HERE.

About the author:

Iain Hood was born in Glasgow and grew up in the seaside town of Ayr. He attended the University of Glasgow and Jordanhill College, and later worked in education in Glasgow and the West Country. He attended the University of Manchester after moving to Cambridge, where he continues to live with his wife and daughter. 

His first novel, This Good Book, was published in 2021, followed by Every Trick in the Book in 2022.