The Macken Charm

Jack Hodgins grew up in a logging town on northern Vancouver Island, a remote area he has described as separate from all the rest of Canada, including its literary traditions. In order to shape fiction about this region with its scattered, lonely towns and often eccentric inhabitants, Hodgins has drawn on various traditions in addition to the Canadian, such as the Gothic techniques employed by William Faulkner and the magic realism of Latin American writers.

Hodgins's first novel, The Invention of the World (1977), uses contemporary characters to re-create the mythic birth of Donal Keneally, who led Irish villagers to establish a colony in western Canada. The next novel is also reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude; in The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne, or, A Word or Two on Those Port Annie Miraclesor, (1980), a tidal wave washes ashore in western Canada a ship from Peru and a "Peruvian seabird." This odd occurrence sets off a series of bizarre events that the locals accept without question. The Honorary Patron (1987) continues the saga of northern Canada's lonely reaches; this time the central character returns to the area after a long absence and brings about peculiar happenings. Hodgins has also published two volumes of short stories in the same mode as his novels.

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