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Aug 05, 2019GLNovak rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This collection of short stories resonated with me when I read it years ago, and rereading it today, immersing myself in Hodgins' quirky humourous prose, brings back the sense of getting to know the characters inside and out. He paints them as more than just residents of Vancouver Island. These people are not mainstream; they can do for themselves and are willing to believe a bit of magic lives in the land. They share an appreciation and tolerance for each other but are not shy about voicing disapproval when they feel it. Spit Delaney is one of these people. He has run old Number One locomotive at the pulp mill in Port Alberni his entire working life and now is retired. It was the real love of his life and he is now pining for it. How does he cope; how does his family cope are the themes here and the final story where we again meet Spit we discover how he has made sense of his life. Characters in the other stories also must deal with events in their own way, unpredictably but totally in keeping with how they view their world. Hodgins is able to paint fully alive, rich portraits of the settings and the people within them, and leaves us with new ways of thinking about life. He has written a number of books and they all have that flavour of individuality that made me love his first book.