Pilgrim’s Progress: A Study of Hugh Hood’s Short Stories

Hugh Hood has been called Canada’s foremost writer of short stories, and in this book, the first complete critical work on Hood’s short stories, Copoloff-Mechanic shows why he is the master craftsman of this genre. Hood has always insisted that his short-story collections should be treated as a unity—as if each story were a chapter of a novel. In this book, the author accepts Hood’s challenge, and shows how his six collections to date are carefully arranged in relation to a guiding theme. As Copoloff-Mechanic shows, the stories in each of the collections are carefully interconnected to illuminate the details of Canadian life in terms of a universal, timeless drama.