Relationships buckle on N.L. hunting trip

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This article was published 17/08/2024 (773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In his debut novel Hides, Newfoundland author Rod Moody-Corbett dives deep into toxic masculinity, academia, climate destruction, political exhaustion and the aftermath of a mass shooting. Quite a lot for a rather slim novel.

Hides follows an unnamed narrator, originally from Newfoundland, who is working as a sessional instructor at a university in Calgary. He barely gets by, his employment low-paying and precarious, but he has little desire to do anything about it.

One of his formerly close friends, Baker, reaches out to invite him on an elaborate hunting trip at a luxury resort in Newfoundland. The trip will be paid for by their now-rich friend Willis as a commemoration for his son Travis, who was killed in a mass shooting on a train in Calgary the year before. It will be a crew of four: the narrator, Baker, Willis and Willis’s younger son Isaac.

The narrator agrees begrudgingly, and his first night in town meets up with Baker for a night of binge drinking. Their escapades land Baker in the drunk tank, who is then unable to go on the trip. The narrator’s father, with whom he has a rather strained relationship, is invited to come along instead.

In the background of this trip, wildfires rage across Canada and there is a looming federal election, something everyone regards as important but from which they are completely disengaged. The novel never names any candidates or mentions platforms or campaigns, just that it looms over all and has a distant importance.

The destination of the trip is a luxury resort called The Castle. The place has an enigmatic allure, including a private section for Werner Herzog, and is owned and operated by an eccentric ornithologist, Dr. Judith Muir, who conducts research out in the surrounding wilderness and charges rich men a fortune to camp and hunt on the land.

Over the course of the trip the various strained relationships are pushed to their breaking points, and the narrator has to come to terms with how insular he has become, how he has withdrawn from his friends and family but ultimately blamed them for that distance. Willis struggles not only with the loss of his older son, but also with his younger son’s focus on environmentalism and how that reflects on his own history, having made a fortune working for oil and gas and other energy companies.

The novel is slight and moves at a brisk pace. It’s not a beach read, as the themes explored here can get rather weighty, but it moves along fairly quickly. There are long stretches of expository dialogue which fill in back story or character traits, but for the most part the plot keeps moving forward as the unnamed narrator is forced to reckon with the difference between who he thinks he is and who he has actually become.

Moody-Corbett has published a fair bit of shorter work, both fiction and non-fiction, and that experience shows through here. Though a debut novel, Hides does show the markings of an accomplished short story writer. To that end, its scope is perhaps a touch limited, but the novel does not go on overlong, nor is it too short to adequately contemplate its ambitious themes — it strikes a good balance. This could be a writer to keep an eye on.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings is out this fall from At Bay Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near, published by Little Ghosts Books.