Again and again he asked,
'does the left hand know
what the right hand does?'
He was a serious man.
                                      — 'Sinister'

The poems in this, the author's first collection, deal with the gaps between reality and illusion. They are concerned with the world we invent and inhabit in secret. The tensions that exist in them — be they sexual or other — are born out of these differences.

John Hughes's deceptively limpid narratives conjure a world of celluloid images and disguises, of fantasy, violence and perversions, a world of make-believe. They investigate the discrepancies between Anna Anderson and Anastasia, between Miss Stanwyck and Mrs MacMurray, between Puritans and Cavaliers, between the left hand and the right. The Something in Particular is laconic, witty and assured.