CLOSE TO HUGH

by Marina Endicott
 
Endicott is an award winning Canadian author, though this book could easily have been set in small town New Hampshire or Connecticut.  I mentioned at my book club that this was perhaps the first Canadian novel I had read that was set in Canada, but not aboutCanada, and how, as an American, that actually took me a moment to wrap my brain around when the first clues about place were laid out.  But enough about my American-centered-ness!
 
This book is mostly about a man named Hugh, who owns a gallery in a small, artsy town where he has grown up.  His, distant, mentally-unstable mother is dying in the hospital, and many of his friends are facing upheaval in their lives.  Hugh is the man that keeps them all together, but when he falls off a ladder and hits his head, he starts to have trouble.
 
We also meet many of the other people in Hugh’s life and hear from them in short interludes narrated by those characters.  Some are stream of consciousness, some poetry, and you get a sense of what is going on in the minds of the people of the town.
 
It’s hard to pin down what this book is about.  It takes place over just one week, and although the portraits are intimate, not much really happens.  The reader is confronted with many opinions on art and artists, but Endicott doesn’t seem to have a strong view herself on any of it.  I guess I would call this a slice of life novel. And the lives are interesting, and the writing beautiful, but really, not much happens. (Lily)