2011 Winner – Jack Hodgins
Jurors’ Citation: The jurors for the 2011 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize were impressed with the overall quality of the titles submitted and were delighted to shortlist five excellent books. From that list, we chose Jack Hodgins’ The Master of Happy Endings as the recipient of this year’s prize. This is an exuberant novel about the power of narrative to serve as a compass for human odysseys. Hodgins’ story is as much about the terrain of the heart and spirit as it is about the physical world and he moves confidently from one to the other, his literary skill in service to his rich imagination.
The Master of Happy Endings tells the wonderful and timely tale of what happens when a retired teacher posts an ad in the newspaper asking to be adopted by a family needing a tutor. Axel Thorstad hopes that returning to the teaching of his beloved English literature might be a way out of the malaise that has enveloped him since his wife passed away. As a high-school teacher, he has seen how students’ lives were shaped and given focus by books and the lessons they imparted. He wants that engagement again.
Baroque in its evocation of landscape and character, moving between irony and innocence, The Master of Happy Endings takes the reader from Estevan Island to Hollywood, from nostalgia to anticipation, and not least from the regret associated with aging to the possibility of hope, of a happy ending.
Jurors
- Theresa Kishkan, writer
- Avi Silberstein, librarian
- Cathy Sorensen, bookseller