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.
Details
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Title
Things As They Are
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Author
Guy Vanderhaeghe
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Binding
Paperback
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Pages
264
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Volumes
1
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Language
ENG
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Publisher
McClelland & Stewart
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Date
2004-02-17
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ISBN
9780771087394 / 077108739X
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Dewey Decimal Code
FIC
Media reviews
“This is vintage work from a writer with all the right stuff. Immensely enjoyable.”
–Mordecai Richler
“Compelling – and often surprisingly comic.… Vanderhaeghe has an uncanny ear for the vernacular.… A polished volume of finely crafted tales.”
–Maclean’s
“These are wonderful stories. Many contain a wealth of character and event which could sustain entire novels. Such an unabashedly entertaining collection of stories is very rare.”
–Bill Gaston, Halifax Daily News
“An unqualified delight.… His stories have drama but he avoids being melodramatic, weaving an artistic web out of the strands of everyday life. His characters and themes are both particular and universal, contemporary and timeless.”
–Canadian Book Review Annual
“Vanderhaeghe creates vivid, credible characters.… [These stories] draw the reader into the dramatic tensions that arise from people living at cross purposes.… Vanderhaeghe is an important voice.…”
–Vancouver Sun
“Guy Vanderhaeghe is extraordinarily adept at taking readers beyond the visible surface and into the emotional heart of his characters.… His vivid prose takes the reader into the skin of his creations.”
–NOW
“[Vanderhaeghe’s stories showcase] a flexible and authentic narrative voice; complex narrative strategy; precise rendition of place, time and mood; broad and penetrating intellect; generous and incisive wit; and remarkably felicitous language.… He brings readers closer to the pathos of human existence.… The particularity and precision of Vanderhaeghe’s characterization paradoxically opens onto universal issues.… Penetrating and moving.…”
–Event
“Things As They Are is impressively varied, ten pieces that capture the absurdity of the human condition, yet retain a compassion that gives them depth.”
–Toronto Sun
“Vanderhaeghe’s talent for seeing things as they are keeps Things As They Are from the grimness its themes might suggest. There is pain here, to be sure, and an aching awareness of our lack of generosity to each other, but it’s leavened with a high-spirited and unselfconscious heartiness that makes those conditions only a part of the broader range of human experience.”
–Ottawa Citizen
“Things As They Are is a terrific collection, full of memorable and moving characters vividly rendered.”
–Broadway Magazine
From the Hardcover edition.
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.
