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What the critics say:
Hilles’ last novel, A Gradual Ruin, has been widely praised:
“Compelling, emotionally engaging, and intellectually stimulating. The novel ends in a way that manages to be inevitable, surprising and deeply satisfying at the same time: a terrific accomplishment. ”
National Post
“A tightly written, muscular epic.” Edmonton Journal
“Graphic and mesmerizing in its detail. Unforgettable.”
Alistair MacLeod
If Canada had a poet laureate, Calgary’s Robert Hilles would be a candidate. Hilles is a genuine people’s poet.
The Calgary Herald
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An excerpt from A Slow Ascent
I study a photograph from 1940
Uncertain if the man in it is my father
Because a shadow covers his face.
But I immediately recognize his hands
Crossed at the wrist and supporting a propped shotgun.
It’s a photo taken to prove he’d killed something.
But it’s his hands that matter now.
He hunted often as a young man
And years later told me
How he loved the slow ascent
Of a flock of mallards over Longbow Lake
Their wings gripped the air
Like fingers the edge of a cliff
As they lifted through air as solid as ground.
He’d track their progress with his shotgun
Until they were fully in flight
Then he’d shoot one of the stragglers.
That bird, heavy and earth bound,
Would drop so quickly
My father barely had time
To send the dog
Who luckily knew exactly
Where to go.
In the photo, he leans back
Maybe a little afraid of all that happens next.
I know most of that now
Could tell him what to watch out for
But that might nudge him
Away from me altogether.
He has been dead these ten years.
But seeing that photograph brings back the pain.
The dead leave so little behind
To be glimpsed only here and there
Until that too is gone.
What I am drawn to most
In the photograph are his hands.
I remember how near the end of his life
They started to shake
And I would try to steady them
But as soon as I took mine away
His began shaking again.
“Never mind,” he’d say,
“I’ve gotten used to it.”
And would light a smoke
And for that brief moment
While he held the lighter
Against the tip of his cigarette
His hands didn’t shake
And he could have been mistaken
For a younger man.
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