Distance

1. The novel's title is ambiguous and abstract. How does the concept of "distance," both literally and figuratively, apply to the novel?2. "You understood that people could vanish, though you might not like it much. And so could bad ideas, unpopular makes of cars,9 and movies you weren't quick enough to catch. What was harder to get into your head was that places, too, could disappear, sometimes without moving an inch" [p 340]. What types of loss does Hodgins explore inDistance? And out of the loss in the novel, what is gained?3.Distanceis a novel which revolves around the idea of family. In what ways isDistancea novel about family? By the end of the novel, has Sonny become part of a family, or is he even less so than at the beginning of the novel?4. Late in the novel, Sonny asks Timo (we can imagine incredulously), "My childhood was an example of you trying harder?" [p 343]. Sonny has reached that strange stage in life when he is both an adult child (son to Timo and Viira) and a parent. How has the relationship between Sonny and Timo changed now that Sonny is the caregiver rather than the one in need of care? How do Sonny's relationships with his own children compare to the relationship he had with his father when he was growing up? How does the absence of a parent figure into these relationships? And how do these relationships compare with other parent-child relationships in the book?5. The Australian flood in which Timo and Sonny get trapped is an echo of floods common in world mythology, including the familiar Biblical story. What other Biblical, mythological, or fantastic elements are present inDistance? How do these elements affect your understanding of the novel?6. Early in the novel, Sonny is reading Gaston Bachelard'sThe Poetics of Space, which is an exploration of "the poetics of the house" and of the philosophical underpinnings of "home." In what ways isDistanceabout the search for home?7. Hodgins writes of Sonny that "He wasn't made for sitting long" [p 52]. This is true both literally and metaphorically. What is the underlying reason for Sonny's continued travelling? Has he found what he was looking for, or escaped what he was running from?8. Jack Hodgins has often been referred to as a regional writer, primarily focusing his fiction on the small towns of Vancouver Island. InDistance which ranges in setting from Ottawa to Victoria, from Portuguese Creek to Australia how does location help augment the themes in the novel?9. "Nothing that remembered his touch was any longer part of the visible world," Sonny thinks on his return to the farm where he grew up [p 86]. The overgrown farm (and dilapidated house) stand in sharp contrast to the formality of Butchart Gardens on the one hand (and the formal gardens Sonny once designed), and the dry desolation of the Australian bush on the other. What is the narrative or thematic significance of the landscapes inDistance? Is it significant that Sonny was once a landscape designer?10. "'Now listen,' he tells the boy. 'Up there to the north there's a cliff on the mainland that rises out of the sea. My father told me this.'" [p 353] There are several young male characters in the novel often referred to as, simply, "the boy" (including the boy on the flight from Ottawa, Rohan and Lachlan in Sydney). Is the author using these characters to reflect elements of Sonny himself? In what specific ways are these characters significant to the novel as a whole?11. Viira could be said to be the absent centre-point of the novel, around which theHodgins, Jack is the author of 'Distance', published 2004 under ISBN 9780771041723 and ISBN 0771041721.