We Had Years (trade paper)

Description

Like Cheever or Munro, Russell Wangersky delves stealthily into disquieting corners of the domestic sphere.Globe and MailA man mourning his only friend contends with his guilt over an unspoken transgression. A member of a concrete crew compares his own friendships with his ex-girlfriends. An elderly woman in a care home struggles to recover speech after a strokeand to explain her unsettled feelings about another resident. A young renter contemplates the lives of her homeowner neighbours. In stories reminiscent of John Cheever or Alice Munro, Russell Wangersky considers the ostensibly everyday to expose the sudden depths of feeling that undergird the most ordinary lives.Praise for Russell WangerskyThe Hour of Bad Decisionsis a collection of beautifully crafted stories, clean and metaphorically rich. Portraits in time, they gesture toward the stubborn and inescapable bravado of error and mistake, and yet are heartbreaking for their helpless inevitability.Commonwealth Writers Prize Shortlist citation[Wangersky dissects] lives when they are fracturing, lives at stress points, lives much like the roller coaster at the centre of McNallys Fair, an exciting and popular ride gleaming with fresh paint, but about to collapse from hidden rust and broken bolts. Such parallels are his mtier and meat as a stylist. Water stains on a wall mirror flaws in the soul (daub on some paint and get rid of the place), and a meal at a diner resembles a relationship, resolute about not living up to its promise.Globe and MailWhirl Awayis a persuasive, artful collection . . . theres a lyricism in the language that elevates many of these tales to an almost allegorical level, allowing room to move around inside them. The gothic of Flannery OConnor comes to mind but without that brutal struggle for gracewith Wangersky, grace naturally extends from a thoughtfulness about what has happened. In this way grace attends with a reconsideration of the past, perhaps by even seeing the past in a new way.National Post