- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Emblem Editions; Paperback ed edition (Sep 16 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0771041977
- ISBN-13: 978-0771041976
- Product Dimensions: 13.7 x 2.5 x 21.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 395 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #621,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Jack Hodgins is known for his daring feats of genre-blending, and he is at this favoured pastime once again in Innocent Cities, simultaneously a neo-Victorian melodrama, a homegrown satire in the spirit of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, and a post-colonial novel of ideas. It's no coincidence that Innocent Cities is set in Victoria, British Columbia, and Victoria Province, Australia. Hodgins is concerned with Victorianism's transplantation abroad, setting Britain's elaborately repressed history against the licentiousness of frontier life.
The hero of Innocent Cities is Logan Sumner, a talented, socially clumsy widowed carpenter, with a repressed upbringing and grand ambitions. Sumner is in love with Adelina, the oldest (adopted) daughter of James Horncastle, a local hotelier and compulsive gambler. Sumner and Adelina appear to be well on their way to a placid engagement until a mysterious Australian woman, Kate McConnell, appears in town, claiming to be married to James Horncastle, and throwing all of Victoria into a state of excited disarray.
Innocent Cities is not among Hodgins's best works. The final hundred pages of the novel, blessed with the introduction of Kate's younger sister Annie McConnell, a spirited suffragette, are a lively entertainment, but the rest of Innocent Cities feels somewhat aimless. Readers new to Hodgins should try The Invention of the World, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne, Broken Ground, or even The Macken Charm before attempting Innocent Cities. --Jack Illingworth
Review
“A perfect tragicomedy, slipping and sliding from raucous laughter to bitter sadness and back again. Hodgins has once again set himself the task of inventing a world in all its rich contradictions of desire fulfilled and lost; and he has succeeded brilliantly.”
–Edmonton Journal
“Complex, intelligent, and artfully constructed…”
–Books in Canada
“A freewheeling story of love and ambition.…”
–Toronto Star
“Hodgins writes with infectious charm and boyish enthusiasm for eccentric and larger-than-life characters.…[He] is a writer of boundless energy and talent.…”
–Ottawa Citizen
“Readers who enjoy Hodgins’ free play with reality, his ability to see the magical in the everyday, to take the surreal easily in his stride, will find much to beguile them…[Innocent Cities is] an elaborate and entirely welcome monument to the genius of its creator.”
– Montreal Gazette
“[Innocent Cities] has the masterful touch of a writer who knows his setting intimately.…Hodgins’s greatest talent lies in his ability to create memorable portrayals of vivid, sometimes disturbing, individuals.…His examination of the crippling effects of hatred and hypocrisy is at times stunning.…Innocent Cities digs deep into the human character, seeking out the hidden, often nasty, baggage that people carry with them.”
–Maclean’s
“It’s a luxuriously written book, full of Hodgins’s wit, quiet wisdom and graceful turns of phrase.”
– Halifax Daily News
“Jack Hodgins tells a rattling good tale.…One cannot but be delighted by the romping of such a fertile imagination, and cannot help but participate in the evident delight of this storyteller in the miracle of words as they shape…a most entertaining narrative.”
–Globe and Mail
“Innocent Cities is both humorous and enchanting, with its cast of oddball characters.”
–Saskatoon StarPhoenix
“[Hodgins’s characters] are as remarkably distinct and memorable as one’s own friends and relatives.…Jack Hodgins has sung into existence a world that is at once as real as the Inner Harbour and as magical as the antipodean wilderness.”
–Monday Magazine (Victoria)
“Innocent Cities is just the kind of enjoyable, funny and endearing novel one has come to expect from Jack Hodgins.…A rollicking read.”
–Nanaimo Weekend
–Edmonton Journal
“Complex, intelligent, and artfully constructed…”
–Books in Canada
“A freewheeling story of love and ambition.…”
–Toronto Star
“Hodgins writes with infectious charm and boyish enthusiasm for eccentric and larger-than-life characters.…[He] is a writer of boundless energy and talent.…”
–Ottawa Citizen
“Readers who enjoy Hodgins’ free play with reality, his ability to see the magical in the everyday, to take the surreal easily in his stride, will find much to beguile them…[Innocent Cities is] an elaborate and entirely welcome monument to the genius of its creator.”
– Montreal Gazette
“[Innocent Cities] has the masterful touch of a writer who knows his setting intimately.…Hodgins’s greatest talent lies in his ability to create memorable portrayals of vivid, sometimes disturbing, individuals.…His examination of the crippling effects of hatred and hypocrisy is at times stunning.…Innocent Cities digs deep into the human character, seeking out the hidden, often nasty, baggage that people carry with them.”
–Maclean’s
“It’s a luxuriously written book, full of Hodgins’s wit, quiet wisdom and graceful turns of phrase.”
– Halifax Daily News
“Jack Hodgins tells a rattling good tale.…One cannot but be delighted by the romping of such a fertile imagination, and cannot help but participate in the evident delight of this storyteller in the miracle of words as they shape…a most entertaining narrative.”
–Globe and Mail
“Innocent Cities is both humorous and enchanting, with its cast of oddball characters.”
–Saskatoon StarPhoenix
“[Hodgins’s characters] are as remarkably distinct and memorable as one’s own friends and relatives.…Jack Hodgins has sung into existence a world that is at once as real as the Inner Harbour and as magical as the antipodean wilderness.”
–Monday Magazine (Victoria)
“Innocent Cities is just the kind of enjoyable, funny and endearing novel one has come to expect from Jack Hodgins.…A rollicking read.”
–Nanaimo Weekend
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enchanting,
By
This review is from: Innocent Cities (Paperback)
I really enjoyed this gentle snapshot into Victoria at the turn of the century. The humour is well situated, the characters are enchanting and the story has sat with me for several years after I read it.
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