Description
A Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year
Sonny Aalto, a restless middle-aged businessman, has spent his life running away from those closest to him. When his estranged, larger-than-life father, Timo, becomes too sick to care for himself, Sonny reluctantly returns to his childhood home of Vancouver Island, where he learns his father is not only dying but wants to die on his own terms – with Sonny’s help. But before facing the gravity of what’s ahead, the two embark on a journey to Australia, in search of a woman from their past, and over the course of the next few months their adventures will reveal difficult truths about fathers and sons, about families, about how we live and how we die – and about the good and bad things that distance can sometimes provide. Wise and irreverent, deeply moving, at times comic, and with vivid settings ranging from the frozen banks of Ottawa’s Rideau Canal to the lushness of Vancouver Island, from the bustle of downtown Sydney to the sun-baked desolation of the Queensland outback, Distance is Jack Hodgins’s most rewarding novel to date.
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 CanadaIn 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
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