sewn paper
Fiction
1994
160 pages
ISBN 0-88984-141-1
$12.95
Around the Mountain
Hugh Hood
The republication of a book which is among the finest that Hugh Hood, one of
Canada's most sophisticated and accomplished authors, has ever written. Around
the Mountain: Scenes from Montréal Life is, in the words of John Metcalf,
`an almost perfect achievement.'
Around the Mountain is a documentary/fantasy portrait of Montréal,
its people, politics, folkways, geography and appearance as they were in
the heady days of Expo 67. These twelve short narratives form a
cyclical, encyclopaedic account of a dozen quarters of the city that
literally circle around the peak of the low hill that Montréalers
call `the mountain'. As Hood recalls in the new introduction to the book:
`I wanted to give a kind of fossil-like existence to something that was in
the process of being born and
simultaneously passing away. It is fascinating to me to go through these
twelve stories to judge what has remained in place and what has been
swept away and forgotten.
Every reader who knows Montréal will have an opinion about this. But some
things have remained unmistakably in place.'
Around the Mountain is populated with people and their stories, from
the misadventures of a convivial defenceman called Fred Carpenter, to the
angelic messenger, Angela Mary Robinson, whose bicultural message of
love and understanding nobody understands, to Victor LaTourelle who is
haunted, as so
many of us in the late twentieth century are haunted, by the past.
`Hood has written a book in which the city is the main character, and
he wonderfully evokes its atmosphere.' `He catches more of Quebec in a few sentences than Hugh MacLennan's
Two Solitudes did in an entire volume. Around the Mountain
is a deeply personal book, meditative, sometimes even sombre, but always
vividly alive. Around the Mountain does not burst upon the reader;
rather, it quietly insinuates itself and grows over the years even larger
in the reader's heart and mind.' `Hood's style is simplicity itself, his approach quite refreshingly
ingenuous.' `He loves that city, and makes the reader love it too, even if one has
already felt its spell.'
- Vancouver Sun
- John Metcalf
- Montreal Star
- Ottawa Citizen
Photo by Noreen Mallory
His work includes: Flying a Red Kite (1962), White Figure, White Ground (1964), You Cant Get There From Here (1972), Black and White Keys (1980), The Motor Boys in Ottawa (1986), which won the first annual QSPELL Award, and You'll Catch Your Death (1992).
Hugh Hood was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988.