Details
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Title
Man Descending
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Author
Vanderhaeghe, Guy
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Binding
Paperback
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Edition
First Thus
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Condition
Used - Good
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Pages
272
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Volumes
1
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Language
ENG
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Publisher
McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, ON, Canada
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Date
2000
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Bookseller's Inventory #
38436752-75
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ISBN
9780771086847 / 0771086849
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Weight
0.81 lbs (0.37 kg)
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Dewey Decimal Code
FIC
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From the publisher
Guy Vanderhaeghe was born in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, in 1951. He is the author of four novels, My Present Age (1984), Homesick (1989), co-winner of the City of Toronto Book Award, The Englishman’s Boy (1996), winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Saskatchewan Book Awards for Fiction and for Best Book of the Year, and a finalist for The Giller Prize and the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and, most recently, The Last Crossing (2002), a long-time national bestseller and winner of the Saskatoon Book Award, the Saskatchewan Book Awards for Fiction and for Book of the Year, and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, and a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. He is also the author of three collections of short stories, Man Descending (1982), winner of the Governor’s General’s Award and the Faber Prize in the U.K., and The Trouble With Heroes (1983), and Things As They Are (1992).
Acclaimed for his fiction, Vanderhaeghe has also written plays. I Had a Job I Liked. Once. was first produced in 1991, and won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama. His second play, Dancock’s Dance, was produced in 1995.
Guy Vanderhaeghe lives in Saskatoon, where he is a Visiting Professor of English at S.T.M. College.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt
I suppose it was having a bad chest that turned me into an observer, a watcher, at an early age.
“Charlie has my chest,” my mother often informed friends. “A real weakness there,” she would add significantly, thumping her own wishbone soundly.
I suppose I had. Family lore had me narrowly escaping death from pneumonia at the age of four. It seems I spent an entire Sunday in delirium, soaking the sheets. Dr. Carlyle was off at the reservoir rowing in his little skiff and couldn’t be reached — something for which my mother illogically refused to forgive him. She was a woman who nursed and tenaciously held dark grudges. Forever after that incident the doctor was slightingly and coldly dismissed in conversation as a “man who betrayed the public’s trust.”
From the Paperback edition.
Media reviews
“These stories are wonderful! I thought I’d ‘sample’ them, and I’ve read them all with that astonished gratitude you feel when you meet a real writer.”
–Alice Munro
“Technically delightful, with multi-themes and layers of meaning.…These are stories to be reread and remembered.”
–Books in Canada
“[These stories] all repay close reading with solid entertainment.”
–New York Times
“Original and stylish, written with a quirky, self-deprecating awareness of the sad shifts men are put to in order to survive.”
–Daily Telegraph (U.K.)
“Flawless.…Each of these stories circles around in the mind, weaving itself into the fabric of the imagination, until the final lines, when, as if a trap door suddenly opens, the whole world of the story drops en masse into the realm of the heart.”
–Bloomsbury Review (U.S.)
“A remarkable achievement.…The stories mark a compelling debut of an artist who sees with compassion the terror and sometimes the joy of the human condition.”
–David Staines, Ottawa Citizen
“[Vanderhaeghe] is blessed with remarkable poise and assurance.…There’s the same shiver of delight and joy of discovery that accompanied Alice Munro’s first collection of stories.”
–Globe and Mail
“Admirably crafted.…”
–The Guardian
“Stunningly good stories.…The action and dialogue are vivid, authentic and often hilarious.…”
–Winnipeg Free Press
“[The stories] shows Vanderhaeghe’s mastery of irony and his dexterity in maneuvering from the comic to the tragic.”
–Journal-Constitution (U.S.)
“[A] remarkable selection of stories.”
–ALA Booklist (U.S.)
“Any Canadian looking in the bathroom mirror is sure to recognize one of Guy Vanderhaeghe’s people. Man Descending is the startling debut of an excellent writer.”
–Rudy Wiebe
About the author
GUY VANDERHAEGHE was born in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, in 1951. His previous fiction includes A Good Man, The Last Crossing, The Englishman's Boy, Things as They Are (stories), Homesick, My Present Age, Man Descending (stories), and Daddy Lenin and Other Stories. Among the many awards he has received are the Governor General's Awards (three times); and, for his body of work, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship, the Writers' Trust Timothy Findley Award, and the Harbourfront Literary Prize. He has received many honours including the Order of Canada.
