Methodists and Madness

The basic plot of Falling Hour, Geoffrey D. Morrison’s first novel, can be easily summarized. A youngish man, Hugh Dalgarno, goes to a park in London, Ontario, on June 11, 2019. He brings with him a picture frame that he has found hanging from a fire hydrant. He intends to sell this picture frame to a buyer he’s met online, but the buyer never arrives. Hugh wanders around the park for several hours. He hears a red-winged blackbird singing. Darkness falls. Strange music starts to play. He finds a dead red-winged blackbird and buries it under a bracken bush by the park pond. He washes his hands in the public washroom, which is covered in graffiti. He hangs the frame from the door and leaves. It’s not clear where he’s going next.

That’s all — except that, of course, that isn’t all, because Falling Hour is in the grand, complicated tradition of modernist novels. Over the course of his day in the park, Hugh’s thoughts travel across time and space in an...