[Jack Hodgin's] first book, Spit Delaney's Island, was a collection of compassionate and gracefully crafted stories set in his native Vancouver Island. This also serves as the setting for The Invention of the World, Hodgins' first novel.

In style and sensibility, both books radiate a jubilant confidence that derives from the author's subtle, bone-deep knowledge of his island. Hodgins is young, and his talent is still coltish, capable of bolting in any number of directions. The Invention of the World suggests a broadening and deepening of his artistic resources; nevertheless, by its own standards it's not as successful as some of the individual stories in the earlier book, being simultaneously more ambitious, more crazy, and more hazardous to write.

The Invention of the World weaves the tale of a bizarre religious colony, which immigrates to Vancouver Island from Ireland at the turn of the century, together with the...