The Macken Charm

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Jack Hodgins burst on the Canadian literary scene in the 1970s with the
publication of his lively collection of short stories, Spit Delaney’s
Island (1976), soon followed by his brilliant, zany, and profound novel,
The Invention of the World (1977). Since then he has buttressed his
reputation with further works, which, though they extended his range and
proved invariably rewarding as fiction, have recently tended to lose a
little of the initial energy and verve.

With The Macken Charm, however, he has returned to the tone as well as
the subject matter of his earlier writings. The novel is set in a
logging community in northern Vancouver Island, and introduces us to a
rambunctious family clan, some of whose individual members we have
already met in earlier narratives. At the centre is a young Macken with
artistic aspirations (based, one suspects, on the general situation of
the author) who must hide his sensitivity from the philistine attitudes
of his neighbors and family.

The result is a joyous, vigorous, humorous novel that, in the best
traditions of comedy, hovers precariously but purposefully on the brink
of the tragic. Indeed, the main action takes place at a funeral, yet,
the Mackens being Irish in origin, the solemnity is transformed into the
creative exuberance of a traditional wake.

Hodgins is one of our most positive writers. While never descending
into the cute or the escapist, he eschews the hell-of-it-all emphases of
so much avant-garde/conventional writing. His human beings have moments
of absurdity, violence, and weakness, but alternating moments of
courage, compassion, and dignity. The mood can change dramatically
between sentences, even within sentences. What more need be said? The
Macken Charm is a bravura performance, and deserves a wide readership.