The eighth novel in Hugh Hood's New Age series, this engrossing novel is a further instalment in the lives of the Goderich family of Toronto.

Matthew Goderich, fast approaching fifty, is a freelance art historian, an occupation that enables him to understand the history of his era and to consider the relationship of events and objects in a continuum: "Time is associated with value . . . Transform time and the values change" is a theme central to Hood's whole series.

On assignment at the Venice Biennale, Matthew encounters Linnet Olcott, a talented British actress who is on location for a film adaptation of work by Proust. For the first time since his wife left him six years earlier, he finds a passionate companion. Matthew and Linnet's story unfolds in prose that may also rival Prousts' for its vibrant materiality -- textures, sounds, light and shadow, flavour, scent -- and for subtlety of characterization and unity of theme and representation.

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.

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