Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Fiction Historical

Dead Men's Watches

by (author) Hugh Hood

Publisher
House of Anansi Press Inc
Initial publish date
Aug 1995
Category
Historical
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780887841682
    Publish Date
    Aug 1995
    List Price
    $25.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

In this tenth book in Hugh Hood's The New Age series, two linked novellas explore the transforming powers of love. In the first novella Matthew Goderich discovers that his late Uncle Philip has had a secret and emotionally rewarding romantic life. In the second novella Matthew nurses his childhood friend, Adam, through a long, painful, and terminal AIDS-induced illness.

Matthew, in the first novella, is the detached observer and dogged detective who comes to understand love; in the second, he finally becomes fully engaged with the emotion of loving as he rids himself of his homophobia and learns to appreciate and embrace Adam, his lifelong friend. Matthew's emotional awakening corresponds with society's growing awareness in the early 1980s of the nature and extent of the AIDS crisis.

Dead Men's Watches continues Hugh Hood's vivid portrayal of Canadian social history and teaches us that the gift of love is all that matters in the end.

About the author

Hugh Hood was born in Toronto in 1928 and studied at the University of Toronto, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1955. He worked as a university teacher for over forty years -- over thirty of those years spent at the Universit? de Montr?al. He was married to painter and printmaker Noreen Mallory and had four children. He died in Montreal in August of 2000.

Hood wrote 32 books, amongst them novels, collections of stories and essays, an art book, and a book of sports journalism. His most extended project, begun in 1975 and occupying him right up until the time of his death, was a twelve volume roman fleuve entitled The New Age / Le nouveau si?cle. The last book in this series, Near Water, was published by Anansi in 2000.

Hugh Hood's profile page