DISTANCE

by Jack Hodgins

"You better get home fast. Your father's taken a turn for the worse."Sonny Aalto couldn't wait to leave home. After his mother disappeared when Sonny was a little kid, his father did a lousy job of raising him. So now that Sonny is in his fifties, a hugely successful businessman in Ottawa with a couple of grown kids, he never thinks of the old man back home on Vancouver Island.Until the old man gets sick and Sonny has to fly home, and his life changes. To his horror he finds that the old man has six months to live, and can't cope on his own. What is to be done?Every reader will sympathize with Sonny's predicament. Finding a retirement home for his cranky Dad is so tough that he decides to leave it all behind and take a trip with him to Australia. From Sydney they head for the middle of the Australian outback to confront Sonny's long-lost mother and find a whole new family of half-brothers - not to mention hunting wild boars and being swept away in a flash flood in the desert.After Australia, the book returns to Vancouver Island, but along the way to Cape Scott (pictured on the cover) Sonny learns hard lessons about fathers and sons, finds love, and discovers the dangers of too much distance.Partly comic, partly tragic, and packed full of both incidents and characters, this book is a feast of humanity and shows Jack Hodgins at his best.

Genres: Canada, Fiction

Unknown Binding

First published September 23, 2003

About the author

Novelist and short story writer Jack Hodgins lives on Vancouver Island where until recently he taught fiction writing at the University of Victoria. Raised in the small rural community of Merville in the Comox Valley, he graduated with a B.Ed from the University of British Columbia, and taught high school in Nanaimo between 1961 and 1981. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa between 1981 and 1983. Between 1983 and 2002 he taught in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria, and was a full professor at the time of his retiring. He occasionally conducts fiction-writing workshops, including an annual workshop in Mallorca, Spain. He and his wife Dianne, a former teacher, live in Cadboro Bay within easy visiting distance of their three adult children and their grandchildren.

Jack Hodgins's fiction has won the Governor General's Award, the President's Medal from the University of Western Ontario, the Gibson's First Novel Award, the Eaton's B.C. Book Award, the Commonwealth Literature Prize (regional), the CNIB Torgi award, the Canada-Australia Prize, the Drummer General's Award, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and has twice been long-listed for the IMPAC/Dublin award. He is the 2006 recipient of the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award "for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia" and the "Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence."

His books include: Spit Delaney's Island (stories), The Invention of the World (novel), The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne (novel), The Barclay Family Theatre (stories), Left Behind in Squabble Bay (children's novel), The Honorary Patron (novel), Innocent Cities (novel), Over Forty in Broken Hill (travel), A Passion for Narrative (a guide to writing fiction), The Macken Charm, (novel), Broken Ground (novel), Distance (novel), and Damage Done by the Storm (stories). Short stories and articles have been published in several magazines in Canada, France, Australia, and the US.

Jack Hodgins has given readings or talks at international literary festivals and other events in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the US. Some of the short stories have been televised or adapted for radio and the stage. A few of the stories and novels have been translated into other languages, including Dutch, Hungarian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Italian, Polish, and Norwegian. In 1985 a film of the story "The Concert Stages of Europe," directed by Giles Walker, was produced by Atlantis Films and the National Film Board of Canada. In 2001 the Victoria Conversatory of Music produced a commissioned opera Eyes on the Mountain by composer Christopher Donason, based upon three of Hodgins's short stories intertwined. A screenplay based upon the title character in Spit Delaney's Island has been optioned by a Vancouver film maker.

A number of scholars in Canada and Europe have published critical studies on his work. He has been the subject of a National Film Board film, Jack Hodgins' Island, and a book, Jack Hodgins and His Work, by David Jeffrey. In 1996, Oolichan Press published a collection of essays on his work, titled On Coasts of Eternity, edited by J. R. (Tim) Struthers. A book of essays on Hodgins's work, edited by Annika Hannan, has been published by Guernica Press, Toronto. His manuscripts, papers, letters and other materials are held in the literary manuscripts archives at the National Library of Canada

In 1990, as part of its 75th anniversary celebration, the University of British Columbia's Alumni Society included him amongst the "75 most distinguished graduates" to be honoured with a plaque. In June of 1995, the University of B.C. awarded him an honorary D.Litt for - according to the UBC Chronicle - bringing "renown to the university and the province as one of Canada's finest fiction writers and as an innovative stylist and distinguished academic." In the spring of 1998 he recei

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy Hodgins' writing a lot, especially his emphasis on and knowledge of Vancouver Island, where the previous novels of his I've read (Broken Ground, The Invention of the World) were set. This one started off familiarly enough, with the return of the proverbial prodigal son from his latest self-imposed exile in the eastern cityscape to the tangled and cut-over wilds of his childhood to care for his ailing father in his dying days. What I wasn't expecting was a sudden sojourn to Queensland and a quest for the missing mother/wife replete with an adventuresome road trip and a harrowing ordeal in a flood. Throughout all the external action though there is the heartbeat of a tortured and flawed love between a father and his son, the latter also himself a flawed and failed father, and the confrontation with the inevitability, for those so fortunate, of the weakening of mind and body at the approach of death. Having spent a rainy vacation on the north end of the island in the Cape Scott region, home of ghosts, bears, and wished-for gardens, I appreciated his return to this locale in the old man's thoughts as the metaphorical end of the line, just as it is the end of the land. A very good read.

[Mike Heenan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the descriptions of the bush on Vancouver Island. Made me feel back home somewhat. Great plot to get the old guy up to Cape Scott. The Australia potion threw me a bit but eventually all became tied together. Makes me long for the smells and feel of the West Coast.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tries to do a lot, but I think it does not quite make it. I love all the plant references, those the first quarter of the book is where these references are most prevalent. The voyage to Australia seems a little bit gimmicky, but maybe the author needed a place that could support the flood scene in a believably way. The Australia section made the book seem more "epic" than it is.

There were times the narrative jumped or swerved so quickly I had to re-read to figure out what was going on; that was annoying, especially when other times the details were explicit and descriptive. I also did not understand the random descriptions of the characters back in Ottawa -- what purpose was that serving?

Characters I liked: The father, the son, the neighbours, the Australian boy, Rowan, maybe Holly. Very much disliked (and did not understand) Charlotte or the old lady in Ottawa (Judy? not sure what her relationship was to Sonny).

Interesting juxtapositions of the Canadian referendum with Australia, and the movie set with life.

Not nearly as good as Broken Ground, but interesting to set a totally different novel in the same geographical setting 50+ years later.

[Tricia Dower · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, really. I enjoyed the trip to Australia and the opportunity to experience raw, dry heat through words alone. The bigger reward in this book is the evolution of the relationship between a dying father and his grown son. I wondered if this book had served as inspiration for Richard Wagamese's Medicine Walk as both feature a dying father asking his estranged son to take him on a particular journey so he can die on his own terms.

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much better than I expected for what is (to me, anyway) a "local" author. Everything about this story was alive to me; although none of the characters specifically resemble anyone I know, again and again it felt like I was reliving real conversations. Are there any lessons in this story? I don't know. But I have a hunch I will keep coming back to find out.

[Gillian Hamstra · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good portion of this book takes place on Vancouver Island. It's always fun when the story is in your back yard. his is a father and son story. well written. good book.