Near Water is the final volume in Hugh Hood's spectacular New Age series, an epic saga that is treasured and revered as a meticulous chronicle of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Canada.

Beginning with an almost stream-of-consciousness meditation on identity, religion, angels, Dionysius, Aristotle, Freud, and you name it, Hugh Hood's prose scintillates in Near Water, animating a kinetic imagination that never misses a beat.

Son of a Nobel laureate, father of a space voyager, friend of a movie star, estranged husband of a painter, and semi-famous because of it all, Matthew Goderich is driving up to the lake for a possible reunion with Edie, from whom he has been separated for 30 years. Then it happens, and we feel it happening too -- the pain, the delusions, the awful, sudden, interior crisis of a cerebrovascular accident. A stroke. And we stay with him, this self-proclaimed hope man who is never alone, while his mind roves over the vivid details of the life he has loved at this place near water.

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