Hummingbird

‘Superbly accomplished... Hughes’ prose is startling and luminous’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Beautifully nuanced and utterly touching’THE DAILY MAIL

Beside a lake in the northern Canadian wilderness, fifteen-year-old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely and isolated life with his father. His only neighbours are a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire, and an expert in snow. But then one summer the enigmatic and shape-shifting Eva Spiller arrives in search of the remains of her parents and together they embark on a strange and disconcerting journey of discovery. Nothing at Sitting Down Lake is quite as it seems. The forest hides ruins and mysteries; the past can never be fully understood. And as Zach and Eva make their way through this haunted landscape, they move ever closer towards an acceptance of what in the end is lost and what can truly be found.

In his fourth novel, award-winning author Tristan Hughes returns to the landscape of his youth in this vivid and poetic coming-of-age story about death, life, and the changes they bring. Set against the harsh, unforgiving beauty of the forests of northern Ontario, Hummingbird unravels a moving tale of loss, absence, and redemption.

-- Publisher: Parthian Books
Zack Taylor and his parents have two homes: their summer camp at Sitting Down Lake, beside a deep, glittering lake and surrounded by wilderness; and their other, nameless home, fifteen minutes from the small, dying town of Crooked River, ‘beside a shallow, weed-clogged pool of water which my father called “the pond” but which my mother – who felt no need to name it otherwise – called “the swamp”.’ It is at Sitting Down Lake that they are happiest and, when Zack’s mother commits suicide, it is where he and his father choose to live, leaving that other, unhappy place to fall into dereliction. ‘We’re in Sitting Down Lake; population: seven.’ It’s a small collection of loners and misfits, all with tragedies in their past. There is Mrs Schneider, a 75-year-old widow who emigrated from Austria, aged 17, in response to an advertisement for wives – ‘She never once mentioned what her life had been like back there, to make her take such a risk.’ Her daily swims in the lake, 200 strokes out and 200 back again, at the same time every morning and afternoon, provide a rhythm and a sense of stability. Occasionally she is joined by her daughter, Judith, whose husband never comes with her. Then there is Oskar, who is Finnish and in his seventies, and who earns a meagre living trapping leeches and minnows. He’s a kindly but taciturn man, a drinker who sleepwalks around the lake at night. And there is Lamar Spiller, ‘a quiet, private, rather melancholy, man’ who surrounds his property with No Trespassing signs, even though nobody ever goes there, until he is joined by his teenage niece, Eva, who was orphaned several years ago when her parents – her father was Lamar’s brother – died in a plane crash. She has been passed from pillar to post by ‘the Children’s Aid people’ before finally being sent to live with her uncle. She and Zack, of a similar age and both grieving for their mothers, trying to make sense of their deaths, are naturally drawn together, and their friendship becomes a source of healing and change, not just for them but also for other members of the lakeside community. Tristan Hughes captures place and people to haunting effect. His writing is lean and sharp, with no wasted words. There is just enough detail, never too much, so that images, actions and interactions strike hard. Sitting Down Lake and the surrounding bush are strong, physical presences, changing through the seasons from the quiet beauty of summer to the unforgiving harshness of winter. Its people are drawn with delicacy and gentle humour. They all have their eccentricities, they are all collectors of something (wigs, maps, stuffed fish and moose heads, photographs, a room full of ‘stuff’), and each eccentricity and collection has a reason and tells a story. One of Zack’s favourite pastimes is to stare at the water, to look beyond the mirrored surface to see what lies below. It is a perfect metaphor for what Hughes does here, introducing us to a small community of private people and slowly revealing their inner selves. Like Zach’s mother’s carvings of animals out of antlers, Hummingbird is a quiet masterpiece in shifting realities. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com