Damage Done by the Storm

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

There’s something for everyone in this collection of short stories by
Jack Hodgins, the award-winning author of seven novels largely set in
the same fictional Vancouver Island community.

The collection’s offerings include “This Summer’s House,” a
Chekhovian story of a family get-together with its resultant
complications; “Galleries,” an exploration of racial tensions
involving a Faulkner scholar and her photographer son who are touring
Mississippi to learn about the writer and end up learning more about
themselves; “Promise,” a tale in which an ex-high-school principal
visits a former pupil 20 years on; and “Damage Done by the Storm,” a
gentle story about a retired senator who tries to keep his word to his
grandson by getting to an important event in spite of the problems posed
by an typical Ottawa snowfall.

The range of characters in these powerful and challenging stories is as
wide as the geographic locations—Australia, Germany, Ottawa, Edmonton,
Mississippi, and the author’s beloved Vancouver Island. Many of the
stories show a promise of a melodramatic climax but metamorphose into
something far less obvious. Damage Done by the Storm was written by an
author clearly at the height of his considerable powers.