omg?? had no idea I'd like this as much as I did. Surprising twists and turns and I read it all in one sitting! So glad I picked it up, and a huge thank you to NetGalley for giving me this book!

I’m so happy this book is being republished. I learned so much about Colquhoon, what a fascinating figure and mind. Her are was beautiful, I want to find a print. Surrealist literature is incredibly cool. I’ve read some contemporary surrealist literature the last few years which really primed me to tackle this book. It’s a great book to read in one sitting with a few cups of tea.

The prose is poetic without being overly flowery, the premise of the story is very interesting, and the setting gives a nice eerie gothic feel to the book. Unfortunately, I found this difficult to get through because it’s incomprehensible to me. It feels like reading someone’s dream which might be ok if it ever went anywhere. But I didn’t feel like it did. I can see why some people will really enjoy this, but it was not for me.

Goose of Hermogenes by Ithell Colquhoun is a surreal, dreamlike novel that defies conventional narrative structure. First published in 1961, it blends elements of gothic fiction, alchemical symbolism, and occult philosophy into a richly enigmatic tale. The story follows a nameless female protagonist who visits her sinister uncle on a remote island, only to become trapped in a strange, shifting reality where time and logic dissolve.

It’s a challenging read—oblique, poetic, and intentionally obscure—but for those drawn to esoteric literature or the occult, Goose of Hermogenes is a fascinating and haunting experience.

A poetic, lyrical work that blurs the lines between novel and extended meditation. The prose is dense at times, but rich with imagery and emotion. It’s less about what happens and more about how things feel. Ideal for readers who appreciate language as much as plot, it explores longing, identity, and the unknowable aspects of love. Moments of narrative clarity emerge between abstract, dreamlike sequences. While it won’t suit everyone, it offers a unique and rewarding experience to those willing to surrender to its rhythm. It’s a novel that reads like a long, thoughtful sigh.

What a strange little book. If someone told me that Colquhoun wrote down every dream that she had for a decade, then wove the strangest of them into this book, I would believe it.

Colquhoun was into alchemy, and the chapters of this books are named after the steps required for creating the philosopher’s stone. I suspect that I would enjoy the story more if I knew something/anything about alchemy, but alas, I do not. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the bizarre narrative and imagery.

The 4th chapter, “Conjunction,” invents a delightful backstory for two of the figures found in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The 5th chapter, “Putrefaction,” made so little sense to me that I may as well have skipped it. The ninth chapter, “Fermentation,” surprised me with ghost prostitution. The thirteenth and final chapter, “Hexentanz,” seemed not be part of the book at all and indeed was not included in the original publication; this Final chapter is exceedingly gross.

Overall, at under 150 pages, it’s worth the experience.

Thank you to Pushkin Press and netgalley for free access to this book.

Goose of Hermogenes opens with our narrator making her way to a mysterious island to visit her uncle. She soon realizes that she's trapped, her uncle keeping her there for some presumedly nefarious purpose centering around the jewels she wears. Between bits of the narrator unearthing secrets about her uncle and his land, the book is interspersed with surreal happenings (consequences of the magic being performed by her uncle or fevered hallucinations, we never know) and meetings with other inhabitants of the island. The prose switches expertly between these parts to mimic loss of reality.

Dreamlike, Gothic and very much surreal, Ithell Colquhoun's novella is only vaguely structured; the basic narrative of an isolated, magical island with the sinister uncle of an unnamed protagonist calls to mind the grim but decadent fairytales of various cultures, with very clear allusions to many other authors as seen in the quote headings of the chapters.

But the 'grounded' quality of the narrative really ends with that summary. A reader will transition from one scene to the next, listlessly floating through the plot with the same curiosity and helplessness as our protagonist, but this is no flaw. Colquhoun's long, labyrinthine sentences unfurl vivid and hypersensitive imagery, the sort of liminal and ornate vision that can only come from both a writer and an artist, and that's where Goose truly shines. However, its surrealist quality is a double-edged sword, as there are moments of too much obfuscation in the prose that, without a healthy amount of clarity, can confuse a reader as to what is really happening. But that's a small price to pay for the unique atmospheric intrigue that Colquhoun paints with her words.

Thank you to Pushkin Press Classics for the ARC through NetGalley.

Our unnamed F protagonist travels to a bizarre island.
The ways of transit are peculiar and this gives us a good hint about the tone - everything that happens afterwards makes little sense in the world of physics.
There is an active clash between the protagonist and her uncle, who is a black magician.
Told very interestingly, the protagonist transforms in the most surrealist ways in this story.
What stands out is the atmosphere. This book is a cousin to the writer’s surreal paintings.
3.5 stars

gorgeously written, incredibly intricate hallucination of a book, made of the most elegant cobwebs and mothwings. a quick read that fully engrosses you. a book that's definitely ahead of its time in many ways. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

Goose of Hermogenes follows an unnamed young woman, as she tries to escape her uncle's island, whose goal it is to conquer death. The chapters are rife with magic, alchemy and symbolism, and weave a surrealist tale.
I found the premise really interesting, but the novel was hard for me to follow, and I struggled with keeping my attention, perhaps because a lot of the symbolism was unfamiliar to me. The chapters seem disjointed and disconnected at times, and feel at times, not like a novel, but like the description of a painting. But for anyone enjoying fantasy, this might be an interesting read!

A bizarre and beautiful narrative in which a nameless female protagonist embarks on a quest, the nature of which is uncertain. Each chapter correlates to an alchemical process which suggests that immortality is to be desired or explored.

I can’t say that I understood this but it was very much like reading a series of interconnected fairy stories in which you don’t necessarily have to get what’s going on to take pleasure in reading them.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

Goose of Hermogenes by Ithell Colquhoun is a first person-POV classic fantasy. The unnamed narrator travels to her uncle’s enchanted island and finds herself the center of a plot to steal her magical stones. As she experiences multiple visions, including ones of romantic love, she also has to contend with the possibility that she could lose her life.

The prose is a lot less straight-forward than I’m used to in modern fantasy. There’s constant metaphors, poetic imagery, and references to classics that make Goose of Hermogenes feel very different. If it came out now, I would probably argue it’s literary fantasy because Ithell Colquhoun is a lot more interested in the artistry of language than she is in telling a very clear plot that goes from A to B to C. I’m probably going to return to this book so I can soak up the language more.

As this book was written in 1961, some of the language in it is outdated, including the use of racialized terms for Asians and Black people. While I am personally fine with preserving the language of a text because it was written in the context it was written in and those word choices preserve our understanding of different time periods, I do think it is also important to warn readers when that kind of language is in a book.

I would recommend this to fans of classic fantasy looking for something more literary-leaning

Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for offering me an ARC copy of this new edition of The Goose of Hermogenes by Ithell Colquhoun, with an introduction from Jennie Higgie.

The Goose of Hermogenes is a short novella (144 pages) which follows an unnamed narrator as she visits, and becomes trapped in, her Uncle’s estate on an unnamed island. Colquhoun was a renowned British artist, poet and occultist who was mostly associated with surrealism and this certainly translates into the narrative of The Goose of Hermogenes.

We follow the unnamed narrator’s experience as she becomes trapped on the island. Unsure throughout whether what we are reading is true, a surreal fever dream, or merely the narrator’s own act of fictitious storytelling, Colquhoun offers beautifully lyrical descriptions of the lush island setting.

For the first half of the novella I was unsure about its pacing - the novella progressed slowly, with Colquhoun focusing on world building. The setting is increasingly gothic as we come to meet the Uncle, the Arbitrator, and explore the estate and the house. It certainly did take some time but all of a sudden we are plunged into the climax of the novella: an occult orgy of alchemical transformation. I came to understand the narrator as being stuck in some sort of liminal space on this island; she meets her family again, and her estranged father, but none of it really seems real.

Most notable to me was the short story embedded in one of the chapters, Corolla’s Pinions, which makes the novella worth reading in its own merit.

Perhaps I would have understood more of the book if I was more well read, as I have a sneaking suspicion some of the plot points were derived from classical texts.

Pushkin’s new edition of The Goose of Hermogenes also includes Hexentanz, the final chapter of the novella which was excised in the original publication. This a short, baffling chapter which is loosely related to the existing plot; perhaps it is narrated by the same character; we hear of the Arbitrator once more also. The final chapter has some quite gruesome elements of body horror which wraps up the message of The Goose of Hermogenes as a cautionary feminist fable of bodily transformation, coercive control, and occultist experimentation.

Goodreads Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7500535960

This was a really strange fever dream of a book which was written beautifully but I did find it a bit confusing in places. I enjoyed this overall as it was interesting and something different from the norm. I’d definitely read more from the author

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc