SOURCE: A review of You'll Catch Your Death, in Quill & Quire, Vol. 59, No. 1, January, 1993, p. 20.

In the following essay, Horton offers a mixed review of You'll Catch Your Death.

Let's get the minor kvetching out of the way right at the start. You'll Catch Your Death features an especially inappropriate book cover. Garish, heavy-handed, technically inept, and graceless, it is everything that Hood's stories are not.

“More Birds” opens this volume, a tale that manages to engage more moral and aesthetic issues in ten and a half pages than many novels. This is Hood at his best: compelling first-person voice; simple, elegant narrative line; evocative, resonant imagery; and a commitment to messy, life-affirming irresolution. “Getting Funding” follows, a rather facile bit of sarcastic fluff aimed at government arts councils and the CBC. Next up: “Third Time Unlucky,” a beautifully realized comic tale of paranoia that packs an O...