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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
neher20j's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Complicated
- Loveable characters? Complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
mamurray's review against another edition
3.0
Good short stories but not good enough to go out of your way to read.
sandra_moore's review against another edition
4.0
A compilation of 12 short stories with characters ranging from young boys to old men, across varied landscapes from England to Saskatchewan. Evocative writing and eloqent prose throughout!
lilylanie's review against another edition
4.0
I don't always enjoy stories where the entire collection is from an exclusively male perspective, but these stories - told by men and boys of varying ages - were really compelling and interesting.
kinbote4zembla's review against another edition
5.0
I was going to give this four stars, but fuck it. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I was going to. In high school, I read Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Englishman's Boy. I hated that book with a fucking passion - pedestrian writing, pedestrian plotting, pedestrian everything. (Even now, many years and many brain cells removed from that experience, I don't think I'll ever be able to read that book, again.)
So this was an incredible surprise.
These stories, although they are rather simple, are written with deeply felt emotion. These stories reminded me quite a bit of Alice Munro's, in that there is a sadness in them that really becomes clear as you reach the final lines. They sucker punch you, in a way.
And when I say that these stories are simple, I don't mean it disparagingly. I just mean that the goal here isn't to weave complex intellectual thematic content. They are emotional and experiential, almost traditional. Folksy, too.
The only issue is that, story to story, the situations are a bit too familiar. The first half of the book deals exclusively with young men, just after WWII, living in troubled familial situations, in rural Saskatchewan, with aggressive fathers and weak mothers, etc. But that is easily forgiven, since each of them was interesting.
I have to say, though, that "The Expatriates' Party" and "Dancing Bear" did almost nothing for me. Unlike the other stories in the collection, I put them aside in the middle of them to watch an episode or two of Louie.
Overall, though, I would say that this collection was damned successful. It really speaks to issues of masculinity (the penis issue in "Going to Russia" was hilarious), morality, family, love, innocence, insanity, and (heartbreakingly in "A Taste for Perfection") mortality.
5 Insane Old Men out of 5
So this was an incredible surprise.
These stories, although they are rather simple, are written with deeply felt emotion. These stories reminded me quite a bit of Alice Munro's, in that there is a sadness in them that really becomes clear as you reach the final lines. They sucker punch you, in a way.
And when I say that these stories are simple, I don't mean it disparagingly. I just mean that the goal here isn't to weave complex intellectual thematic content. They are emotional and experiential, almost traditional. Folksy, too.
The only issue is that, story to story, the situations are a bit too familiar. The first half of the book deals exclusively with young men, just after WWII, living in troubled familial situations, in rural Saskatchewan, with aggressive fathers and weak mothers, etc. But that is easily forgiven, since each of them was interesting.
I have to say, though, that "The Expatriates' Party" and "Dancing Bear" did almost nothing for me. Unlike the other stories in the collection, I put them aside in the middle of them to watch an episode or two of Louie.
Overall, though, I would say that this collection was damned successful. It really speaks to issues of masculinity (the penis issue in "Going to Russia" was hilarious), morality, family, love, innocence, insanity, and (heartbreakingly in "A Taste for Perfection") mortality.
5 Insane Old Men out of 5
adamz24's review against another edition
4.0
There's no better way to put the major 'problem' with Vanderhaeghe than to say that he is sort of, in theory, um... lame. He writes about rural life, about really fucking white members of Canada's previously existent 'liberal class,' about Canadian suburbia before it really had any sort of tension to it, and uses a lot of what I call 'oh shucks'-isms. Dude writes like what he is, like a university educated white guy from small town Saskatchewan.
The great thing about Vanderhaeghe is that I've seen his fiction eagerly consumed by your young urban dwelling types who hang out at city bars and smoke Meharis outside said bars. The guy writes this sort of good old-fashioned fiction that's totally great and has that timeless (or whatever you want to call it) quality that people I hate claim all good fiction has.
Vanderhaeghe, I'm trying to say, is the one dude who epitomizes everything I find boring and shitty about establishment CanLit and a lot of establishment lit in general, but manages to totally rock my world with something like "Going to Russia" or "What I Learned from Caesar," the latter, about a Belgian immigrant, seems to me one of the most important Canadian stories ever written, but nobody fucking teaches it. Nooo; let's have another Wiebe...
The great thing about Vanderhaeghe is that I've seen his fiction eagerly consumed by your young urban dwelling types who hang out at city bars and smoke Meharis outside said bars. The guy writes this sort of good old-fashioned fiction that's totally great and has that timeless (or whatever you want to call it) quality that people I hate claim all good fiction has.
Vanderhaeghe, I'm trying to say, is the one dude who epitomizes everything I find boring and shitty about establishment CanLit and a lot of establishment lit in general, but manages to totally rock my world with something like "Going to Russia" or "What I Learned from Caesar," the latter, about a Belgian immigrant, seems to me one of the most important Canadian stories ever written, but nobody fucking teaches it. Nooo; let's have another Wiebe...