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A review by kinbote4zembla
Man Descending by Guy Vanderhaeghe
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