A Year in Hinesight

Marie T. Gillis is a member of the Angus L. Macdonald Library staff at
St. Francis Xavier University.

Playwright, novelist, and columnist Anne Hines has collected four
years’ worth of humorous musings about life in A Year in Hinesight.
Although this is territory that has been covered before by many
observational humorists, there are still gems to be mined and Hines does
a creditable job of digging them up.

As Hines warns us, the compression of four years into one results in
some unusual shifts. For instance, husband Michael morphs into her ex
and then appears, misleadingly, as her husband again. In one of the more
amusing contradictions, she vows she will never get a dog, but by the
next column has succumbed and, in one of the funniest pieces in the
book, confesses her overwhelming love for Sparky, her new Maltese
Terrier (she now designates herself “Sparky’s mom”). These changes
are not particularly disconcerting; in fact, they tend to underline the
uncertainty of life in a way that is gentle and palatable.

Hines has divided her book into seasons. She begins her year in
September, with the children returning to school and Hines herself
beginning to focus on Christmas preparations, a dominant preoccupation
until December. Winter, spring, and summer follow nature’s themes of
rest, rebirth, and renewal. Throughout, Hines deals with children
growing up, her own personal growth, work, shopping, and all the other
details of life that can drive a person mad. If there is a failing in
this book, it is in Hines’s tendency to end many of her pieces in a
trite, maudlin fashion. This switch from humor to sentimentality can be
discomfiting.

The book provides a few laugh-out-loud moments, but for the most part,
it is genial, kindly humor. Hines will leave you with a smile on your
face—and that, on most days, is more than enough.