The Orchid Stories

Praised by John Ashbery as evoking "a rococo world of banality and nightmare which . . . comes in the end to seem like paradise." The Orchid Stories presents us with interwoven stories as delicate and exquisite as the flowers for which they're named, conveying an almost otherworldly beauty. Images, moods, and characters recur with the clarity of a dream: Phil, the little boy gigolo; Mummers and Mummy, who "adopt" him; the alluring Diana Vienna; and the eccentric Dr. Schmidlapp, who plans to capture the rare "Native Innards" orchid precisely at the stroke of midnight.