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Have you ever noticed a strangeness in your world, suggesting something normally hidden? Lorenzo does and he refuses to pretend otherwise.
I was an outsider, an Englishman, living in a rundown district of the unnamed Latin American metropolis where the story takes place, and I wrote this novella pretty much in one go.
It wasn’t difficult. To venture out to work on my bike from Lorenzo and Pati’s street was to experience a grand fiction that just invited words onto the page. It became a respectful, heartfelt response to where I was and its people.
Anyone recognizing the city and familiar with its political history might pick up on certain references and its implicit theme. However, I kept the capital and its country anonymous deliberately out of an aversion to didactic books: you know, high-minded, commendable and dead. I preferred to let an element of urban magical realism into the story and for it to assume a more universal, allegorical character.
Reviewed by Tanja Jurkovic for Readers' Favorite
The Ministry of Flowers by Guy Arthur Simpson is a highly intriguing novella that follows the story and experiences of Lorenzo who, with his wife and partner, lives in a world that is visibly and terrifyingly changing daily. Lorenzo is perceptive and intelligent, a man who sees the world around him in a different light. This outlook on the world gets him to a point in life where people around him, including his wife, become concerned about his mental health and well-being. However, Lorenzo’s theories about the political and social issues, in this world which is slowly losing its shine, and supported by strange occurrences that no one can explain, might be true. Will Lorenzo be able to find out what is happening, and try to do something about it while there is still time?
Guy Arthur Simpson’s imagination entwined with the political and social commentary of a world similar to ours demonstrates the uniqueness of this novella and its characters, enhancing the storytelling. Lorenzo’s mindset and insightful nature align well with the story that Simpson is telling the reader, but it also packs a fair share of surprises. The narrative is straightforward in the plot, but it is the atmosphere and the feeling of hopelessness and nostalgia for better times that truly give The Ministry of Flowers another rich, mind-bending, and exciting dimension. I believe that readers will thoroughly enjoy this story as they, together with Lorenzo, embark on a wholesome but puzzling journey.
