On Coasts of Eternity: Jack Hodgin's Fictional Universe

Paul Hjartarson is an associate professor of English at the University
of Alberta.

On Coasts of Eternity is a motley collection of reviews of Jack
Hodgins’s fiction, interviews with the author, and essays on his
writing. Of the 17 contributions, the following six are reprints: Jack
David’s 1977 interview with Hodgins; Margaret Laurence’s review of
Spit Delaney’s Island; Ann Mandel’s review of The Barclay Family
Theatre; and essays by David L. Jeffrey, W.J. Keith, and JoAnn McCaig.
In addition to new essays by W.H. New, Lorna Knight, William Butt, J.R.
(Tim) Struthers, Louis K. MacKendrick, Lawrence Mathews, and Wayne
Grady, there are three previously unpublished interviews conducted by
Struthers, who also contributes “A Checklist of Works by Jack
Hodgins.”

W.H. New provides a general introduction that unfortunately fails to
offer any rationale for the choices that were made in assembling the
contributions. One wonders, for example, why the interview most
frequently cited in the essays—namely, Geoff Hancock’s interview
with Hodgins in Canadian Fiction magazine—are not included in the
volume. Also regrettable are the editor’s decisions not to standardize
references to the various editions of Hodgins’s books, and not to
provide notes on the contributors.