Damage Done By The Storm - Hardcover

Every story is so different that there is something for everyone here. “Balance” is a story about a bored and (we think) boring orthotics sculptor – until we find that he has fallen in love with the feet of one of his distant patients, and has done something about it. “This Summer’s House” describes a Vancouver Island family that rents a new summer house each year for the central event, a great family get-together that reminds us of a modern version of Chekhov. “Over Here” is an innocent story told by a 10-year-old boy who tries to keep the secret that the girl next door is an Indian.

“Damage Done by the Storm” shows us Ottawa picking up after a snowfall as the central character, a retired senator, tries to keep his word to his grandson by getting to an important event. “Galleries” has a Faulkner scholar and her photographer son touring Mississippi to learn about the writer, and learning about themselves. “Promise” shows what happens when a former high-school principal visits a former pupil twenty years on. “The Crossing” is a taut story of an “ordinary” woman’s life exploding. “Inheritance” tells how a Vancouver Island couple learn that their uncle in Ottawa plans to leave everything to them, in what proves to be a mixed blessing. “Astonishing the Blind” has a Canadian pianist in Germany writing home to congratulate her parents on their wedding anniversary, only to reveal terrible secrets about two marriages – and to reveal links between some of the stories.

The geographic range is wide – Australia, Germany, Ottawa, Edmonton, Mississippi and, as home base, the Vancouver Island logging and farming communities that feature in Spit Delaney’s Island and other books by Jack Hodgins.The range of characters is just as wide, and many of these people are unforgettably larger than life, while still being utterly believable. In summary, a terrific collection of stories that will delight readers and renew the Jack Hodgins debate about the comparative excellence of his novels and his short stories.

Jack Hodgins was born in 1938 in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island. After attending the University of British Columbia he taught high school English in Nanaimo, before accepting teaching positions at a number of Canadian universities. He is now a member of the faculty at the University of Victoria, the city where he and his family live.

His literary career has been spectacular. His first book, a collection of stories entitled Spit Delaney’s Island, was nominated for the 1976 Governor General’s Award, and “did for the people of Vancouver Island what...William Faulkner [did] for the American south.” (The Montreal Gazette). The Vancouver Province called it “superb.”

His first novel, The Invention of the World, published a year later, attracted many admiring reviews (“an astounding achievement”, Quill & Quire; “the major work of Canadian magic realism,” Canadian Fiction Magazine), and won the Gibson Literary Award as the best first novel of the year. His second novel, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne (1979), received still more critical praise and won the Governor General’s Award.

Since then Jack Hodgins has produced an admired collection of short stories, The Barclay Family Theatre (1981), and a third novel, The Honorary Patron (1987), as well as a book for children, Left Behind in Squabble Bay (1988). He has been awarded the Canada-Australia Literature Prize, and has read from his work in countries as distant as Japan and Austria.