Product Description
Guy Vanderhaeghe's long-awaited second novel--the scrupulously honest portrait of a father and daughter very much at odds--and very much alike. A portrait of three generations, as heart-wrenching as it is funny, as compassionate as it is honest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Please read this book...
Without going into the actual storyline too deeply, I will only say that this book is beautiful and sad and I think accurately portrays the conflicting feelings of people who love and resent their family members. The main character in the book is Vera, who has left her father and disabled brother in Saskatchewan to forge a new life for herself in Toronto and ends up returning feeling not quite defeated but definitely weathered. Her relationships with her son and her aging father are complicated and recognizable and the ending was surprising as the past comes back at first to hurt and then to heal. I grew up in Saskatchewan and many familiar characters of the small town are present in the story...it is worth reading if for no other reason than to visit the prairie landscape, but the characters will pull you in as well.

One of Canada's Best
The story is a model of conflict between generations.Vera, the protagonist, headstrong daughter, wonderful mother, seargant!, good wife can be admired and detested, depending on the scene.But she is one of thegreat characters of Canadian fiction. Alec, the grandfather, will be mainlydisliked for his habits and assumptions about women, but he can beunderstood as well. Daniel, son and grandson, will be liked by almost all,even though he has no outstanding "manly" qualities, he loves hisgrandfather, and is loyal to the end. Characterization marks great fiction. Here it is. ... Read more

Product Description
The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of breathtaking quests, adventurous detours, and hard-won redemption. Englishmen Charles and Addington Gaunt are ordered by their tyrannical industrialist father to find their brother Simon, who has gone missing in the wilds of the American West. Charles, a disillusioned artist, and Addington, a disgraced military captain, set off to remote Fort Benton on the edge of the Montana frontier. The brothers hire the enigmatic Jerry Potts, a half Blackfoot, half Scot guide, to lead them North, where Simon was last seen. Addington takes command of the mission, buying enough provisions to fill two wagons, and hires sycophantic journalist Caleb Ayto to record the journey for posterity. As the party heads out, it grows to include the fiery Lucy Stoveall, Civil War veteran Custis Straw, and saloonkeeper Aloysius Dooley. This unlikely posse becomes entangled in an unfolding drama that forces each one of them to confront personal demons. Told from alternating points of view with vivid flashbacks, The Last Crossing is a novel of ruggedness and salvation, an epic masterpiece set in a time when worlds collided, were destroyed, and were built anew. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (39)

WHAT A FABULOUS WRITER
This is one of those books--and there aren't many--that I feel obliged to put into people's hands, saying, "Trust me--this is GREAT storytelling."Vandehaeghe's bag of writerly skills boggles the mind.To start with, no one writes dialogue this well--from MULTIPLE points of view encompassing multiple nationalities, cultures, genders and social levels.Then there's his power to evoke setting--and we're talking settings that have long since disappeared, like the American and Canadian frontiers. It's not like he just walked out his front door to take a look around and then wrote down what he saw.His research into periods, locales and cultures is just so well rendered that you feel certain this is how it really was--or if not, it should have been because it makes perfect sense.This is the sort of book you turn off the phone for and just settle in, because once you get rolling, you're just not going to be able to resist turning just a few more pages to see--well, not so much what happens next, because there is a certain kind of cosmic justice that you know is going to be meted out, but rather, how these folks are getting on.The characters, even the unlikeable ones--and there are some doozies--are just so damn interesting that they leap off the page and demand that you take an interest in them. And while I may have found the ending a little predictable, in part, I was just fine with that because the trip was so enjoyable and because the cosmos does, after all, occasionally turn out the way it's supposed to.

Sluggish
This book was packed with historical detail, but I found the narrative sluggish.At times, I felt many of the passages should have been left to the "backstory" (i.e., edited out).

But, the last battle scene, between the Crow and the Blackfoot Indian tribes, was absolutely riveting.

And, though I felt the ending was veering toward high melodrama (on the "two ships that pass in the night" variety), I did appreciate knowing that at least one of the brothers was able to extract some meaning from his life . . .

The Gaunts Put the 'Dis' in Dysfunctional
Young Englishman Simon Gaunt, religious zealot, has gone missing in the Old American West (specifically Canada). Dear old dad Henry, the overbearing so-and-so, sends older brother Addington and Simon's twin Charles in search. These folks put the `dis' in a dysfunctional family. Addington, a self-centered martinet, loves only himself and his pleasures and timid Charles, an aspiring artist, seems not to know what he wants. They hire Jerry Potts, a real-life Canadian frontiersman (Vanderhaeghe is Canadian) to help find Simon and meet up with a collection of society's castoffs and loose ends and form an odd posse.

To some readers, calling this book Western literature might be a put off or a putdown - I happen to love Western writing (A.B. Guthrie and Larry McMurtry to name two) - so let's just call it literature set in the Old West. Vanderhaeghe is a tremendously talented writer.

Highly recommended for fans of Western literature or just fine writing of any kind.

Great read. Definitely recommended
Richly painted and diverse characters fill a story highlighting American and Canadian Western Frontier history. A nearly boiling-over melting pot of Englishmen, Scots, Americans, Native Americans, men and women, and mixes in between. Wonderful writing style that moves along at a great pace while spending time diving deep into the people and places that make up the tale.

Won't Find Better Writing
You won't be able to find any better writing than this.Frequently I had to stop just to admire the wordsmithing I had just encountered.Mr. Vanderhaeghe has an unparelleled ability to use metaphors, similes and simple words to describe something so vividly that you think you are looking at the object rather than a page in abook.

The story line is a young, idealistic Englishman gets lost in America.At the urging of their tyrannical father his two brothers search Montana and into Canada for him.Along the way they are joined by a Civil War veteran and a woman who are key players and a few ancillary characters.There are interactions with Indians throughout, but not of the cowboy and Indian type.

The tale is spun by the characters themselves, flashing from one to another.Occasionally a third person narrative is interjected to move the plot along.The author gets the different voices of the characters well so it is easy to maintain the identity of the speaker.

The historical context and relations with the Indians of the area are captured well.There is a love triangle and a character or two going over the edge.Sibling rivalries and love are explored deeply.

In addition to the fine writing, the author is terrific at developing the characters.Early on, the reader feels that he knows all of them, which always adds to a book.The dialogue between them is colorful and believeable.Often in a book such as this the first person narratives do not work because the author embues the speaker with too much knowledge or intelligence to be believable.Mr. Vanderhaege does not fall into the trap.The thoughts of each are credible and fit their personalities.

My only criticism of the book is that there are a few slow spots that are long enough to detract from the story line and the book as a whole.Even in the areas that are not so well paced, however, the writing continues to be absolutely wonderful.If there were half stars this would be be four and one half.

This is strongly recommended for the writing first, the characters second and the story line third. ... Read more

Product Description
By The Award-Winning Author Of The Last Crossing And The Englishman’s Boy

Deftly layered, humane, these stories brilliantly capture the pathos and comedy of the human condition. Following the death of his domineering father, a middle-aged man tries to uncover a truth about their sometimes difficult relationship. When a grade-six teacher tyrannizes a student without apparent reason, the boy learns an unexpected lesson and his young life is changed irrevocably. An elderly widow falls prey to a con artist, revealing what we are capable of sacrificing to appease what we dread the most. A twelve-year-old boy is shunted off to his grandmother’s farm and becomes part of an adult world he scarcely understands. A group of high-school students play on a classmate’s self-delusions and set up what promises to be the most loaded boxing match ever staged. Whether writing from the point of view of a child, an adolescent, or a man in his seventies, Guy Vanderhaeghe takes us into the lives of his characters with razor-sharp insights laced with gentle humour. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Captivating stories
Guy Vanderhaege's characters voices live on in my head after reading this book. I still chuckle at the heated conversation between an old, proud man and a young punk wearing the fashion of the pants hanging down.
Each story captures the drama and the pain of life, from youth to old age. Guy knows how to buid up the scene and then break your heart with such bitter sweetness.
One minute you are laughing and the next you are holding your breath at the pain or pathos.
There are brilliant descriptions. My favourite was of the teacher who looked like Sitting Bull with a perm.
I did not want to finish reading such a crafted collection.

Saskatchewaners
Guy Vanderhaeghe's short stories are better than his novels, and this collection is the best of them.Quiet as a shady grove, this collection follows on Sinclair Ross' tone, and is marginally less depressing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

a novel about losing your way in life
This book takes the characters and themes of the last two stories in Man Descending (a collection of short stories by Vanderhaeghe) and expands them into a full length novel. As his protagonist pursues an obsessive and hopeless quest to reunite with his ex wife, Vanderhaeghe explores the themes of disquiet, losing your way in modern society and a life that peaks too early. The uniqueness of My Present Age is that it features a character who should, by all means, be a very successful member of society and yet is living a life that is slowly deteriorating out of control. It is an often overlooked character type, unknown to those who assume that intelligence engenders success. Vanderhaeghe uses a straightforward, yet elegent, writing style to show that it is easy to lose your way in the modern world if you have never truly learned how to live in it. A good balance is struck between examining where individuals fail and where the sometimes ludicrously absurd nature of our society fails.

My Present Age Review
This multiple award winning, unforgettable, Canadian novel is a fictional story about one man's downward sloped life. Ed, a unwealthy yet educated school teacher in his late 30's, had hopes of persuing a virtuous lifeliving with his wife Victoria while seeking employment in the writingbusiness. However, after a short marriage, the wedded couple separated.This seems to a milestone in Ed's life as he now spends countless hourstrying to track down his ex-wife, whom is bearing his only child.

Heresides directly above an elderly and irritating individual named Mr.McMurtry that seems to devote his entire retired life to pestering Ed. Itappears that he will not halt until Ed has lost all mental health fromlistening to numberless hours of his poor choice in music or has beenkicked out of the apartment complex all together. Nevertheless, Edcontinues his search for Victoria. Risking his flourishing profession,friends, and both mental and physical health to re-unite himself with whathe feels is his only achievement in life, Victoria.

This novel is asurprising dark, yet amusing drama written in first person. The use of acomplex mixture of both brief and elaborate sentances strongly describesthe setting and mood of every scene. The use of setting well defines Ed'strue living style and previous life experiences as the author explains inextreme detail everything from room odors, to what Ed is wearing on hisfeet. This truly helps to define each environment that Ed is placed in, andonly adds detail that helps us be transposed into Ed's environment.

A development of a theme is well exemplified when Ed is in perusal ofVictoria. He starts out by calling all close relatives in hopes that theymay lead him in the direction of his dreams. However, due to previousmishaps, nobody wants to assist him, and keep all information from him.This only adds to Ed's slowly declining downfall. He is then found roamingthe streets in his damaged, loud, out of style, yellow, Italian vehicle.This development of theme only increases thorough the novel. The authoruses the same techniques in many points in the book as we learn about thelife of Ed.

There are few situations where neither humor nor ironyis greatly used in the novel. In some most instances, the novel takes on aserious tone, as Ed goes from one crisis to another. However, in someinstances the author incorporates humor, such as when Ed seeks help fromhis intelligent friend Benny. Ed rudely interrupt's a business meeting andpretends to mishear Benny when asked to leave, as an invitation to sitdown. Ed continues the escapade for several minutes until Benny can take nomore nonsense and escorts Ed to the door with no more that a few words ofwisdom.

I feel that a notably strong point in this novel is it'sremarkable description in detail. The author soundly sets the scenes withnumberless amounts of fine points. This however does not seem to bore thetone of the novel, as each itemized account is required for trueunderstanding, and interruption of the novel. Despite all this detail,it only applies to scenery. I felt that character development was poor, asonly Ed, the main character, can truly be analyzed due to lack of detail insub characters. For example, we hear little about Victoria, Benny, Max, norMr. McMurtry, as more focus is on Ed himself. Despite this however, I feelMy Present Age was an excellent novel, a great story, and something I hopeto remember. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Creating the tribal myth
"It was a force mounted and armed and accoutered without consistency, piebald and paint buffalo runners, blooded bays and chestnuts, Henrys and Sharps and Winchesters and Colts and double-barrelled scatterguns, a Derringer in a coat pocket, skinning knives and Bowie knives, hatchets, a Confederate cavalry sabre hung scabbarded on a saddlehorn, smoke-stained buckskins and bar-stained broadcloth, broken plug hats and glossy fur caps, loud checked shirts and patched linen, canvas dusters and wool capotes, parfleche-soled moccasins and high heeled riding boots. Every face bearing a different mark of vice or virtue, motive or resolve." - The punitive expedition ready to ride against American Indian horse thieves, in THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY

The Great American Myth, or Legend if you will. As I understand it having been born shortly after World War II, it's the American Western; stout-hearted pioneers and brave cavalry troopers battle marauding Indians on the endless plains, lonely lawmen out-draw desperadoes in the main streets of dusty settlements, and honest (and sometimes singing) cowboys - spurs a janglin' - drive herds across an unforgiving landscape to cow towns where gold-hearted saloon girls await. The Myth, first created by writers of cheap pulp fiction for the masses, was adapted to the Silver Screen by Tinseltown in the first half of the twentieth century and the legend became firmly established as God's Own Truth in the minds of an idolizing and fulfilled citizenry.

The Myth has been perceived as national in scope, but is, I think, more accurately appreciated as "tribal." The intrepid heroes of the sagas, especially those in the Moving Pictures, are virtually always WASPish. Indeed, that's but one aspect of the Myth that was spoofed in the film Blazing Saddles. But, I digress.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY begins in the spring of 1873 as two young, Indian warriors steal the horses from a band of wolf hunters encamped on the plains of Montana Territory. Later, after having made the long walk to Fort Benton, the remounted wolfers ride out to recapture their horses and punish the thieves. Joining the vigilante group is "The Englishman's Boy", a young American wanderer until recently the gun-bearer for a visiting - and recently felled by disease - English dandy on a Wild Frontier hunting vacation.

Also in this novel by Guy Vanderhaege, it's 1923 Hollywood. Harry Vincent, a young title-writer laboring in the bowels of Best Chance Pictures, is summoned to the Hollywood Hills home of his studio's reclusive head, Damon Ira Chance. Harry is persuaded to track down an aging bit-player in the Western films of the day, Shorty McAdoo. Shorty is elusive, but is also rumored to be the last, genuine, Indian-fighting cowboy alive. Damon suspects Shorty has a story to tell, and he wants Vincent to get it.

The reader will surmise from early on that the Englishman's Boy and Shorty McAdoo are one and the same.

In alternating chapters, the reader follows both the outcome of the wolfers' punitive expedition and Harry's task to find Shorty and get his story, the latter evolving into Vincent's struggle to maintain his integrity and self-esteem in the face of Chance's film-making obsession.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY is also, incidentally as a sub-plot, a window on the Hollywood of the 1920s, in itself an American Myth that will not withstand close scrutiny untarnished. But that is perhaps best left to another account that has been, or has yet to be, written.

This brilliant novel serves to remind that the West could be, and certainly was, a capricious, cruel and violent place with nary a Hoppy, Roy, Gene, Paladin or Marshall Dillon within a day's riding distance. In the evolution of films within my lifetime, I first realized something was amiss with the Myth with the "Spaghetti Westerns", in which life and death were gritty affairs and the heroes not always clean-shaven, neatly-pressed and admirable. And the White Hats seemed in short supply. Then, with the screen adaptation of Lonesome Dove, perhaps the greatest TV miniseries ever made, we saw indeed the random cruelty and brutality and fickle dangers to be found in rivers and forgotten arroyos and around isolated campfires in the Old West. Finally, in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Unforgiven, any romantic notions that we had left regarding the Great American Myth were perhaps shattered forever. One wonders why Westerns have become Hollywood's forgotten genre; nobody would now believe a resurgence of the mythology.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY describes a particular instance in the fueling of the Myth. Perhaps the book's most moving chapter is the last in which such tribal myth-making is depicted as being a cross-cultural phenomenon - as if that was ever in doubt.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY is a wonderful, thought-provoking, eloquent read that itself would supply the script for an epic film. ... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the Governor General's Award

Counterpointing the stories of the legendary Western cowboy Shorty McAdoo and Harry Vincent, the ambitious young screenwriter commissioned to retell his story in 1920s Hollywood, this novel reconstructs an epic journey through Montana into the Canadian plains, by a group of men pursuing their stolen horses.

The Englishman's Boy intelligently and creatively depicts an American West where greed and deception are tempered by honor and strength. As Richard Ford has noted, "Vanderhaeghe is simply a wonderful writer. The Englishman's Boy, spanning as it does two countries, two centuries, two views of history—the Canadian Wild West as 'imagined' by Hollywood—is a great accomplishment. Readers, I think, will find this book irresistible."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Recommended!
I never wrote a review for a book before, so im going to keep this short and sweet.The story is a great mix of western and the story of a canadain working the hollywoods film industry.I had to read this at my college and its a great read and will leave you with a new perspective on how history works and how we cannot expect it to remain true to the facts.

BORING
By far the boringest most pointless book I've ever read in my life. I seriously don't see how it won this award and I seriously don't see a life in anybody who would bother to read past the first chapter of this pointless novel.

impossible to put down
Guy Vanderhaeghe has crafted a masterful novel about the Canadian WIld West and 1920s Hollywood which starts as a riveting thriller and turns into a meditation on quetions of identity (personal and national), the role of memory in historical reconstruction, and the value (or is it futility?) of remembering and retelling the past.

The book tells two stories.In one, the Swan Hills Massacre looms as Caandian settlers head out into the West, following "horse thieves."Among them is the Englishman, from the point of view of whose servant-- the Boy, Shorty McAdoo-- the action unfolds.The other story tells of Damon Ira LaChance, Hollywood mogul, who wants to make an epic D.W. Griffiths-inspired Western.La Chance's producer seeks out the reticent McAdoo and the narative alternates between the Hollywood and Wild West stories.

ALthought the characters remain opaque, Vanderhaghe is on sure fictional footing here.One of the novel's points is that history ironically becomes less knowable the more it is interpreted.The horror of the events that McAdoo will witness is both the subject of LaChance's film and the simple fact that makes it necessary for the film to "misintepret" the events it portrays.So it is with the characters:we see actions and words, but motivations are strangely absent, as is interior character development.It is as if the narrator knows that his own story is a re-creation (and not recreation) whose limits-- a hundred and twenty years after the "fact"-- are acknowledged in his refusal to make up yet ANOTHER story about the men's interior lives.Perhaps, as some have suggested, this is the flaw in Vanderhaeghe's novel; perhaps it is his subtle nod to the Hollywood tradition within which the novel must work.

The book is an edge of the seat thriller, a philosophical question-poser, and often oddly beautiful, its nostalgia shot through with a bitter self-consciousness.Like all great Westerns (Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch,The Shooting, The Great Northfield Minnesota Gang, High Noon), The Englishman's Boys is about the death of the imagined West and, sadly, the death of the real, complex but strangely opaque people who once lived there.

The best book ever written!
Guy is my cousin and I am very proud to say that. This is the best book that I have ever read and for those of you who say it sucks because it is confusing, clearly you are just uneducated and you don't deserve to read this book.

Why you should go to Canada
When I occasionally get to Canada, I always search out the bookstores, as you can find great Canadian novels like this one that are practically unknown in the US. The characters andstorylines in this novel ring historically true and are at the same time unique.The book intriguingly weaves together the not so familiar old West of Canada (at least to readers in the US) with prohibition-era Hollywood.The writing is plain, direct, and superb. This is great literature with important things to say, delivered in the form of a compelling and engrossing story. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from American Review of Canadian Studies, published by Association for Canadian Studies in the United States on December 22, 2001. The length of the article is 4772 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Narrative geography in Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Englishman's Boy.(Critical Essay)
Author: Patricia Linton
Publication: American Review of Canadian Studies (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 2001
Publisher: Association for Canadian Studies in the United States
Volume: 31Issue: 4Page: 611(12)

Article Type: Critical Essay

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Novels by Guy Vanderhaeghe, Short Story Collections by Guy Vanderhaeghe, the Englishman's Boy, Man Descending, My Present Age, the Last Crossing, Things as They Are?. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The Englishman's Boy is a novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe, published in 1996 by McClelland and Stewart. It won the Governor General's Award for English language fiction in 1996, and was a nominee for the Giller Prize. It deals with the events of the Cypress Hills Massacre and is set in nineteenth century Montana and Saskatchewan. On March 2, 2008, The Englishman's Boy premiered as a made for TV movie on CBC with a budget of $11.7 million. The film won six Gemini Awards: Best Dramatic Mini-Series; John N. Smith as director; Nicholas Campbell as leading actor; Katharine Isabelle as supporting actress; Carmen Kotyk, for casting; and Beverley Wowchuk for costumes. ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=9242404 ... Read more

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Word count: 1800. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Stunning!
I cannot believe no one has reviewed this book. Perhaps it's because Guy Vanderhaege is Canadian. In any case, this is probably the most impressive collection of short stories I have ever read in my life. They are fantastic - I can't say enough about this gifted writer. ... Read more

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Text entirely in Bangladesh ... Read more

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Interesting reading
This is my first exposure to any work by this author.
I found the humor quite irresistible and laughed out loud
more than once. Ed is quite the character: he's a slob and an underachiever and wallows in self-pity constantly yet you can't help admiring him for his loyalty to his wife, even after she leaves him.
He truly loves her.

I thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue but wish there was not so
much swearing, totally unnecessary and off-putting.
Plus a happy ending would have made it a masterpiece.
(Please look away now if you have not read the book.)
What if Ed and his wife had reconciled
and he had shaped up and taken care of her until she was back
on her feet? With all three of them (his wife is pregnant)
living together in contentment? Things like that can happen,
you know, and it would have make this book a real winner.
Ed deserved to win. That is how I will think of the ending in my own mind. Finally: was the baby Ed's? I got the impression it was Anthony's?
(How do you know?) Did Ed end up in an asylum? Who was the black guy
who came in at the end, another fantasy/hallucination or was it
a hospital attendant? I think I will read more of Guy Vanderhaeghe's work.
... Read more