Around the Mountain is subtitled, 'Scenes from Montreal Life'. A collection of essays, some of them apparently non-fiction fiction, about the varied aspects of life in Montreal that moves from scrub hockey leagues, to suburban development, to the old quarters of the city. Hood loves the city. He walks it, he bicycles it, he drives it. Some parts of the city foster life, some parts do not. Hood accepts both. Progress means scummed rivers, vanishing farms and sculpture on the overpass pylons of uncompleted freeways. Hood sometimes likes what replaces the farms and streams, sometimes he does not. The waterfront is filthy but active. He goes there frequently to get the feel of it; just as he goes to the top of the mountain. Both places are the city, not any city, the city. Perhaps if he were designing the city he would do it differently, but he's...