Abstract

'Nostalgia' is a novel about a man, Malcolm Mole, who is forced to confront the memory of his wife's death. A gifted woman, but one who, from an early age had been made aware that her defective heart would claim her life before the age of thirty, Evelyn had lived her life recklessly, and died under mysterious circumstances. The setting of the novel is fundamental to its meaning. Mole lives in a dilapidated manor house in Victoria, B.C. with his daughter and another man, Edward, who looks after the estate. Mole is as apathetic about the disintegration of his house as he has been about the disintegration of his health. Into this situation wanders a young man in search of himself who, by dint of his naive curiosity, facilitates the reckoning, and healing, that Mole is attempting. It is most certainly a novel is progress. Originally conceived as the first in a trilogy of novels about Victoria, B.C., beginning in the year 1840 with the colonization of Vancouver Island, and continuing until the present day, it is now my intention to condense that history into one novel, reincarnating the character of Mole three times, in different disguises. In this way, I hope to create not only a complex and enduring character, but very much a novel of place--the Eden, or Victoria, in fact, for which the contemporary Mole feels such nostalgia.