\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWBLACK COMEDYAge. Mac-GUY VANDERHAEGHE, My Presentmillan, $19.95.GUY VANDERHAEGHE HAS FOLLOWED hisimpressive debut as a writer of shortstories — Man Descending is certainly aworthy winner of the Governor General'sAward, with its deadly accurate dialogue,its effective imagery and descriptions, itswit, and its humorously harrowing insightinto the feelings of people who havesomehow found themselves on the outsidelooking in, yet in a quaintly twentiethcenturybourgeois fashion are so aware ofthe failings of those who are inside theywouldn't (and couldn't) join them foranything — with an equally impressivedebut as a novelist in My Present Age.Some early reviews of My Present Age,while acknowledging Vanderhaeghe'scontinuing power as a writer, suggest anunease with the novel. It is precisely thatunease, plus the crafty way he goes aboutdeveloping it, which convinces me thatMy Present Age isn't simply the apprenticework of a coming writer but a highlysuccessful work of art in itself. For Vanderhaeghe,in choosing to write at evengreater length about, and in the narrativevoice of, Ed, the feckless protagonist ofthe final two stories in Man Descending,has chosen to attempt one of the mostdifficult feats in fiction — to make an unsympatheticcharacter sympathetic withoutever losing focus on the traits thatmake him such an unloveable S.O.B. Hesucceeds; in fact, he succeeds so well hehad me laughing out loud one minuteand stunned into silent shock the next.Such success is more than reason enoughto praise and recommend My PresentAge to all who care about contemporaryfiction.As Marsha, one of Ed's old "friends,"tells him near the end of the novel, Ed is"a fuck-up, and infantile jerk. We've alwaysbeen embarrassed for you, the wayyou act." And later she adds this: "Nobodyfelt comfortable around you, everybodyfelt you were judging them, evenpoor Victoria, who was so patiently andpathetically waiting for you to join thehuman race. Do you have any idea howgood the rest of us felt believing weweren't going to end up like the walkingdead all around us? Do you? And thenthis messy shlub, this twenty-two-year-oldzombie, would shuffle into the room andpiss on our parade." Marsha has Edpretty well pegged, though he might tryto tell us that he never judges people;the point for the reader is that Ed pisseswith so much energy and glory that ifone is not in the line of fire (and asreader one is not) one can't help butadmire the act.Those who have read Man Descendingwill recall that in the title story and"Sam, Soren, and Ed," Ed and Victoriasuffered marital difficulties and breakup,though Ed fought hard to prevent Victoriafrom getting wholly out of hisclutches. Many must have felt, as I did,that Ed's story was far from finished, andwanted to find out what happened next.What is causing unease in some readersis not that My Present Age doesn't answerthe question but that it pulls nopunches, and that although there are stillscenes of extreme if also excruciatingcomedy it is essentially a work of palpabledarkness, perhaps even defeat.Ed is still fighting his ex-friend Benny,the lawyer representing Victoria, and heis still capable of savagely funny anger atpeople like the radio Hot-line host hecalls "the Beast" and the prying old manin the apartment below him. But he hasretired from life. When Victoria askshim for lunch, and in the face of his"attack-is-the-best-defence" approachonly manages to hint that she has amajor problem of her own before disappearing,Ed is hauled out of the safe