A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

through a valley of hobby farms he reflectsthat "all this area had been dense with timberonce." Now, as delighted as I am by thiscondemnation of the heedless pillaging ofBC's forests—reproach which metonymicallyquestions the entire narrative ofprogress and development—I do think thatsome readers will impatiently seek a morevigorous assertion of outrage.Hodgins reconstructs the island, thecoast, and the region as a community—offlesh and blood, and of narrative—in orderto challenge its portrayal as a frontierordained to supply the centre with rawmaterials, consumers, and rustic moviesets. In "The Lepers' Squint," a short storythat first appeared in 1978, Hodgins had anaspiring Irish writer point out to a visitingNorth American novelist the inevitablecommodification of the region. "Someday," she said, "they will have converted allour history into restaurants and bars likethis one, just as I will have converted it allinto fiction." She went on to explain that"this place exists" for her because a greatregional writer "made it real. He and others,in their stories." Hodgins's narrativeproject has, of course, long been to makehis region real. His superior achievement inThe Macken Charm is to manifest thatregion in place and time as direct commentupon the contemporary western world.The Macken Charm is to be the first of atrilogy. Hodgins has said that the thrill ofonce again working in the idiom of his earliestyears was "like finding Spit Delaney,like finding all those characters in the SpitDelaney stories, it was, Oh my gosh, I'mback in that skin again." This is Rusty'sstory; the second in the trilogy will beSonny in middle age, set "vaguely in theearly nineties"; the third will be set in 1922:"One character will be important to allthree." Rusty's mother Frieda or fatherEddie? Thousands of Hodgins's aficionados,in Canada, in Europe, and downunder, will be eagerly guessing.Proper Amazement 'Greg HollingsheadThe Roaring Girl. Sommerville House $22.95Reviewed by Constance RookeThe Roaring Girl, Greg Hollingshead's 1995Governor General's Award winning storycollection, has two epigraphs:Jesus said, "Become passers-by"— The Gospel of St. ThomasThere are no innocent bystanders.What were they doing there in the firstplace?— William S. BurroughsTogether, they signal the motifs of watchingand complicity that pervade the collection,the artist's stance in the world, his sense ofself and relationship to the other, and alsosomething of the bemused but laser-sharpsensibility that for me links Hollingsheadwith three giants of the contemporary shortstory: Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, andAlice Munro. Like them, he is both wizardand muddler—a superbly talented writerwho knows that his material (the life hetaps, alongside which he travels) is stillmore potent than he can show. In awe oflife, staggered by the reality of other people,hard on himself, he chisels away in storyafter story, trying to get it right.These are masterful stories, marvelouslynuanced, accurate, and well-made—butwhat they speak to is the sense of beingmastered, whether by plenitude or bypoverty. It's a wonderfully attractive thingin a writer this good. He knows the strangenessof this dialogue, the weirdness of theselives; he cannot ever get over it. He's in perpetuallove, perpetual pain—because it's allso astonishing and so recalcitrant, andbecause we keep on missing the point.There is something harsh in Hollingshead'ssensibility, too—the odd, ugly twist thatmarks a wrenching away from the goodnessto which he is profoundly drawn.141