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Daddy Lenin and Other Stories
Bestselling author Guy Vanderhaeghe’s new book of fiction is both timely and timeless and showcases his supreme talent as a storyteller and poignant observer of the human condition.
Among these nine addictive and resonant A teenage boy breaks out of the strict confines of his family, his bid for independence leads him in over his head. He learns about life in short order and there is no turning back. An actor’s penchant for hiding behind a role, on and off stage, is tested to the limits and what he comes to discover finally places him face to face with the truth. With his mother hospitalized for a nervous condition and his father away on long work stints, a boy is sent to another family for his meals. His gradually building relationship with a teenage daughter who has been left handicapped from Polio opens unexpected doors to the world. In the powerful title story, a middle-aged man remeets his former adviser at university, a charismatic and domineering professor dubbed Daddy Lenin. As their tense reunion progresses, secrets from the past painfully revise remembered events and threaten to topple the scaffolding of a marriage.
With Daddy Lenin and Other Stories , award-winning author Guy Vanderhaeghe returns once again to the form that launched his stellar literary career. Here is a grand master writing at the height of his powers.
Among these nine addictive and resonant A teenage boy breaks out of the strict confines of his family, his bid for independence leads him in over his head. He learns about life in short order and there is no turning back. An actor’s penchant for hiding behind a role, on and off stage, is tested to the limits and what he comes to discover finally places him face to face with the truth. With his mother hospitalized for a nervous condition and his father away on long work stints, a boy is sent to another family for his meals. His gradually building relationship with a teenage daughter who has been left handicapped from Polio opens unexpected doors to the world. In the powerful title story, a middle-aged man remeets his former adviser at university, a charismatic and domineering professor dubbed Daddy Lenin. As their tense reunion progresses, secrets from the past painfully revise remembered events and threaten to topple the scaffolding of a marriage.
With Daddy Lenin and Other Stories , award-winning author Guy Vanderhaeghe returns once again to the form that launched his stellar literary career. Here is a grand master writing at the height of his powers.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2015
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404 people want to read
About the author
Guy Vanderhaeghe
34 books197 followersGuy Clarence Vanderhaeghe, OC, SOM is a Canadian fiction author.
Vanderhaeghe received his Bachelor of Arts degree with great distinction in 1971, High Honours in History in 1972 and Master of Arts in History in 1975, all from the University of Saskatchewan. In 1978 he received his Bachelor of Education with great distinction from the University of Regina. In 1973 he was Research Officer, Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan and, from 1974 until 1977, he worked as Archival and Library Assistant at the university. From 1975 to 1977 he was a freelance writer and editor and in 1978 and 1979 taught English and history at Herbert High School in Herbert, Saskatchewan. In 1983 and 1984 he was Writer-in-Residence with the Saskatoon Public Library and in 1985 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Ottawa. He has been a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa (1985-86), faculty member of the Writing Program of the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990-91), faculty member in charge of senior fiction students in the SAGE Hills Creative Writing Program (1992). Since 1993 he has served as a visiting professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan.
Vanderhaeghe lives with his wife in Saskatoon.
Vanderhaeghe's first book, Man Descending: selected stories (1982), was winner of a Governor General's Award and the United Kingdom's Faber Prize. A novel, The Englishman's Boy (1996), won him a second Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and for Best Book of the Year, and it was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
He is perhaps best-known for The Last Crossing (2001), a 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. The novel was selected for the 2004 edition of Canada Reads as the book that should be read by all Canadians.
In 2003, Vanderhaeghe was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Vanderhaeghe received his Bachelor of Arts degree with great distinction in 1971, High Honours in History in 1972 and Master of Arts in History in 1975, all from the University of Saskatchewan. In 1978 he received his Bachelor of Education with great distinction from the University of Regina. In 1973 he was Research Officer, Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan and, from 1974 until 1977, he worked as Archival and Library Assistant at the university. From 1975 to 1977 he was a freelance writer and editor and in 1978 and 1979 taught English and history at Herbert High School in Herbert, Saskatchewan. In 1983 and 1984 he was Writer-in-Residence with the Saskatoon Public Library and in 1985 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Ottawa. He has been a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa (1985-86), faculty member of the Writing Program of the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990-91), faculty member in charge of senior fiction students in the SAGE Hills Creative Writing Program (1992). Since 1993 he has served as a visiting professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan.
Vanderhaeghe lives with his wife in Saskatoon.
Vanderhaeghe's first book, Man Descending: selected stories (1982), was winner of a Governor General's Award and the United Kingdom's Faber Prize. A novel, The Englishman's Boy (1996), won him a second Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and for Best Book of the Year, and it was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
He is perhaps best-known for The Last Crossing (2001), a 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. The novel was selected for the 2004 edition of Canada Reads as the book that should be read by all Canadians.
In 2003, Vanderhaeghe was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
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July 31, 2020
My first book of 2016 was a winner – literally.
Daddy Lenin And Other Stories recently won the Governor General’s Award for fiction, one of Canada’s top literary prizes.
It was the third such honour for author Guy Vanderhaeghe (the only others to do this are Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and Hugh MacLennan), and it’s very deserving. These are clear, unpretentious stories about white, middle-aged men facing big crises or looking back on life-changing events when they were boys or young adults. All are at least partly set in Saskatchewan where Vanderhaeghe has lived nearly all his life.
I especially liked two early stories, “Koenig & Company” and “1957 Chevy Bel Air,” which both feature adolescent boys whose encounters with girls from “the wrong side of the tracks” have major consequences.
Vanderhaeghe understands and has affection for all his characters, from the bright outcast in “Koenig” who asks the proud narrator for a bit of help, to the strict Lutheran parents in “Chevy” who are critical of their son’s obsession with a trashy (but glamorous) girl.
The author’s a master at concocting the squirm-inducing moment, one where all a character’s vanities or foibles are put to the test. A couple of times I found myself saying “No!” when a character was about to do something unwise.
I certainly did that to Charlie Brewster, the smug, minor professor in “Tick Tock,” whose altercation with a condo neighbour reignites his deep-seated rage.
I think I also did that in “Live Large,” in which a businessman awaiting an important phone call from his boss decides to play a game of golf, and all the bad choices that have led to his particular crisis – based on vanity, drinking and possibly infidelity – come into play yet again.
In “Anything,” a semi-famous Toronto actor gives up his profession and moves to a prairie town after his wife dies, but finds it difficult to play an ordinary person – that is, until he locates an inspiring prop and begins looking for an eager audience.
And in the masterful title story, the narrator runs into his former university mentor some 40 years after school and sees the reunion as a way to finally settle scores, not just with his professor but with his own wife, who has become a powerful realtor while he’s slunk into dull retirement.
There’s something old-fashioned about these stories. There are no postmodern tricks with language or structure. But Vanderhaeghe knows his beleaguered straight white male dinosaurs so well.
His women are rising stars, from that “top gun Executive Circle” realtor to an ambitious, brilliant academic whose “Rate My Professor” evaluations leave the male narrator’s in the dust. It’s telling that one of the book’s least convincing narrators is revealed to be gay.
But otherwise the author is a master with voice, setting, texture. You want vivid writing? Here is Vanderhaeghe describing a prairie winter:
This passage works on two levels, not just to evoke a storm but – especially with words like “pall,” “lament,” “throat” and “shriek” – to suggest the mind of the narrator, who is mourning the recent loss of his wife.
And this nice detail from the first paragraph of “Daddy Lenin” shows the narrator watching students lined up at an ATM:
Again, this is a striking image by itself, but it’s also tied to the story’s themes of idolatry and repentance.
Vanderhaeghe, ever the veteran, knows exactly what he’s doing.
Daddy Lenin And Other Stories recently won the Governor General’s Award for fiction, one of Canada’s top literary prizes.
It was the third such honour for author Guy Vanderhaeghe (the only others to do this are Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and Hugh MacLennan), and it’s very deserving. These are clear, unpretentious stories about white, middle-aged men facing big crises or looking back on life-changing events when they were boys or young adults. All are at least partly set in Saskatchewan where Vanderhaeghe has lived nearly all his life.
I especially liked two early stories, “Koenig & Company” and “1957 Chevy Bel Air,” which both feature adolescent boys whose encounters with girls from “the wrong side of the tracks” have major consequences.
Vanderhaeghe understands and has affection for all his characters, from the bright outcast in “Koenig” who asks the proud narrator for a bit of help, to the strict Lutheran parents in “Chevy” who are critical of their son’s obsession with a trashy (but glamorous) girl.
The author’s a master at concocting the squirm-inducing moment, one where all a character’s vanities or foibles are put to the test. A couple of times I found myself saying “No!” when a character was about to do something unwise.
I certainly did that to Charlie Brewster, the smug, minor professor in “Tick Tock,” whose altercation with a condo neighbour reignites his deep-seated rage.
I think I also did that in “Live Large,” in which a businessman awaiting an important phone call from his boss decides to play a game of golf, and all the bad choices that have led to his particular crisis – based on vanity, drinking and possibly infidelity – come into play yet again.
In “Anything,” a semi-famous Toronto actor gives up his profession and moves to a prairie town after his wife dies, but finds it difficult to play an ordinary person – that is, until he locates an inspiring prop and begins looking for an eager audience.
And in the masterful title story, the narrator runs into his former university mentor some 40 years after school and sees the reunion as a way to finally settle scores, not just with his professor but with his own wife, who has become a powerful realtor while he’s slunk into dull retirement.
There’s something old-fashioned about these stories. There are no postmodern tricks with language or structure. But Vanderhaeghe knows his beleaguered straight white male dinosaurs so well.
His women are rising stars, from that “top gun Executive Circle” realtor to an ambitious, brilliant academic whose “Rate My Professor” evaluations leave the male narrator’s in the dust. It’s telling that one of the book’s least convincing narrators is revealed to be gay.
But otherwise the author is a master with voice, setting, texture. You want vivid writing? Here is Vanderhaeghe describing a prairie winter:
On the days when the sky didn’t blanket everything in sight with a pall of snow, the wind came shrieking down from the hills to thud against the doors, to lament in his roof vents, to groan in the throat of his chimney.
This passage works on two levels, not just to evoke a storm but – especially with words like “pall,” “lament,” “throat” and “shriek” – to suggest the mind of the narrator, who is mourning the recent loss of his wife.
And this nice detail from the first paragraph of “Daddy Lenin” shows the narrator watching students lined up at an ATM:
Most were texting as they waited their turn, heads bent in the reverential silence of parishioners shuffling towards the communion rail.
Again, this is a striking image by itself, but it’s also tied to the story’s themes of idolatry and repentance.
Vanderhaeghe, ever the veteran, knows exactly what he’s doing.
June 26, 2017
Daddy Lenin is a collection of very manly stories, in the best sense of that word. Mostly populated by mid- to late-middle-aged men, these nine short stories examine – through interior monologues, dredged up memories, and pressure-filled present-day situations – what it is to be a (white, middle-classed Canadian) man alive today, and it ain't no bed of roses.
The two stories that bookend the collection highlight the progression of the modern man: In the first, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a teenage boy in the 60s falls in with a couple of tough kids, and when a prank they pull goes off the rails, he is left alone with a crazy old man; like confronting some addled Dickensian ghost of the future. In the final story, Daddy Lenin, a recently retired school teacher runs into his academic mentor, and although the erstwhile professor is now ragged and seedy, his arrogance ensures that our protagonist will never get over past wrongs; forever in the grip of the ghosts of the past. In between, we meet boys who start relationships with girls from the wrong sort of families, men who are being forced to retire, or are recently widowed and at loose ends, or are forced to confront their failures as providers; each at war with the ghosts of their present. Without being anti-feminist or “failing to check their privilege”, all of these stories demonstrate the existential angst of the modern man, each a perfect encapsulation of the effects of changing gender roles and expectations. What women there are in these stories tend to be emasculating (a penetrating therapist, a higher earning spouse, a sexual adventurer) but I wasn't put off by their portrayals; these are stories about men, and each of them needed someone to act as his foil.
If I did have a complaint about these stories, it's that they eventually seemed formulaic in structure: a situation is presented, background information is slowly revealed, and then a few final paragraphs charge off the page. This was nagging at me until I read this interview with Guy Vanderhaeghe:
This crystallization happens in every story and the effect I felt of it being formulaic is likely just because I devoured this collection too quickly; should I really complain that something that worked so well once was then used again, to repeated success? Here's the ending to 1957 Chevy Bel Air, in which a successful businessman's only regret is the apparent unhappiness of his youngest son:
And there it is: the bill for luck and happiness always comes due, early promise often results in wasted lives, and even at the end of a modestly successful career, a man can be left asking, “What was the point of all that?” This is a very intriguing and well written collection from an author I have long admired and I highly recommend it.
The two stories that bookend the collection highlight the progression of the modern man: In the first, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a teenage boy in the 60s falls in with a couple of tough kids, and when a prank they pull goes off the rails, he is left alone with a crazy old man; like confronting some addled Dickensian ghost of the future. In the final story, Daddy Lenin, a recently retired school teacher runs into his academic mentor, and although the erstwhile professor is now ragged and seedy, his arrogance ensures that our protagonist will never get over past wrongs; forever in the grip of the ghosts of the past. In between, we meet boys who start relationships with girls from the wrong sort of families, men who are being forced to retire, or are recently widowed and at loose ends, or are forced to confront their failures as providers; each at war with the ghosts of their present. Without being anti-feminist or “failing to check their privilege”, all of these stories demonstrate the existential angst of the modern man, each a perfect encapsulation of the effects of changing gender roles and expectations. What women there are in these stories tend to be emasculating (a penetrating therapist, a higher earning spouse, a sexual adventurer) but I wasn't put off by their portrayals; these are stories about men, and each of them needed someone to act as his foil.
If I did have a complaint about these stories, it's that they eventually seemed formulaic in structure: a situation is presented, background information is slowly revealed, and then a few final paragraphs charge off the page. This was nagging at me until I read this interview with Guy Vanderhaeghe:
I’ve always had the feeling that a short story is not simply a short novel. I have always felt that the short story shared more with poetry. I think you often hope that within a short story the puzzle with the narrative snaps into focus with the last paragraph. It should crystallize everything that has taken place in the story.
This crystallization happens in every story and the effect I felt of it being formulaic is likely just because I devoured this collection too quickly; should I really complain that something that worked so well once was then used again, to repeated success? Here's the ending to 1957 Chevy Bel Air, in which a successful businessman's only regret is the apparent unhappiness of his youngest son:
What he would like to do is hand the keys to the 1957 Chevy Bel Air to Brendan in the hope the boy would drive away as fast as he can. On nights when the hard little stars beat against the windshield like brilliant hail and the prairie wind moans its insinuations, he can imagine Brendan speeding down some road, the CD blaring the strange music that thumps night after night from his bedroom, the wind ruffling his blond hair, each mile bringing him closer to where he needs to be.
In his mind's eye, Randy Bright hungrily watches his son until a final twist in the highway pavement whips Brendan out of sight, the Chevy Bel Air carrying him on to a waiting refuge, safety, a haven of happiness. He knows it is not going to happen, but he wishes it would, wishes that Brendan could be as lucky as he has been. Thirty-five years of contentment is something, even if now the bill for it seems to have come due.
And there it is: the bill for luck and happiness always comes due, early promise often results in wasted lives, and even at the end of a modestly successful career, a man can be left asking, “What was the point of all that?” This is a very intriguing and well written collection from an author I have long admired and I highly recommend it.
December 31, 2025
My favorite Canadian author. I prefer his novels but his short stories are very good too.
July 6, 2015
Almost to a person, the protagonists of the nine stories comprising Guy Vanderhaeghe's haunting new short story collection Daddy Lenin are imbued with failure. They've failed or are on the verge of failing in ways big and small, from how they've navigated family and business and marriages, or not, to how they've neglected to properly appreciate or recognize someone or something until it was perhaps too late. Vanderhaeghe offers piercing moments of awareness and self-awareness, balanced precisely on that razor's edge of "why am I reading this?" to absolutely not being able to look away ... both that car wreck compulsion and a clutching, underlying sense that there are cautionary lessons to be learned here. Vanderhaeghe illustrates strikingly - with the widowed and hollow character actor, with the boy who is fascinated by, then rejects an intelligent girl with polio, but resumes his fascination with her later in life - that the harshest comeuppances are the ones we willingly deal ourselves. Just as poignantly, Vanderhaeghe suggests that redemption - for the troubled and belligerent uncle, for the equally troubled nephew he wanted to adopt - however rudimentary or final that redemption, is still possible.
March 26, 2016
I enjoyed some of the stories extremely well ("Koenig & Company" for example) but the majority left me unmoved. Vanderhaeghe takes a retrospective approach to telling these stories, so all of his narrators seem to be looking back on their lives and bemoaning some event or another, which is one of my least favourite tropes of the short story genre. Also there are a lot of late-middle-aged men who are frankly quite pathetic in one way or another, which is fine for one story but gets a bit repetitive / weary when it appears in half a dozen...
I'm picky about short story collections, so this isn't one I'd recommend if someone was looking to read short stories. But that doesn't mean it's bad. I don't regret reading it. But now that I'm done with it I'll probably not think of it again.
I'm picky about short story collections, so this isn't one I'd recommend if someone was looking to read short stories. But that doesn't mean it's bad. I don't regret reading it. But now that I'm done with it I'll probably not think of it again.
March 21, 2015
This book was really fantastic. I was lucky to get an advance copy from the goodreads first reads program. The vast majority of these short stories were excellent. They were gripping, fast paced and even with the short story format I felt like I really had an opportunity to connect and care about the characters. I felt like the writing was extremely well done and I really enjoyed the Canadian connection in many of the stories. There were 2 stories that I didn't connect with, thus the 4 star rating. I highly recommend that you check this one out.
April 29, 2015
Except for the first of nine stories in this collection, they couldn't have been written by a less mature man. Vanderhaeghe's exquisitely written tales dwell on young men but often from the perspective of middle age. As a whole they illustrate how decisions and actions made while young manifest throughout life. Each is uniquely memorable.
I squirmed while Billy resisted Sabrina's invitation to the graduation dance. I winced when Tony became Tonio and acted his way into an awkward situation. I held my breath when Charley Brewster's painful hands clenched in response to his bullying neighbour. I admired Bob like everyone else and wondered if he would ever find his family. I travelled with Bert Molson when Counsellor Sally brought him to Uncle Ted and the tunnel. I puzzled over Jack's mixed feelings towards his old mentor known as Daddy Lenin.
This is a great collection of compelling portraits.
I squirmed while Billy resisted Sabrina's invitation to the graduation dance. I winced when Tony became Tonio and acted his way into an awkward situation. I held my breath when Charley Brewster's painful hands clenched in response to his bullying neighbour. I admired Bob like everyone else and wondered if he would ever find his family. I travelled with Bert Molson when Counsellor Sally brought him to Uncle Ted and the tunnel. I puzzled over Jack's mixed feelings towards his old mentor known as Daddy Lenin.
This is a great collection of compelling portraits.
May 21, 2015
The beauty of a good piece of literature is the ability to empathize with the plight of the characters. A good writer can make a reader relate to the people he is talking about in a few simple words. Guy Vanderhaeghe is one such writer with that skill and he brings that skill forward repeatedly in his latest collection called Daddy Lenin And Other Stories.
http://tinyurl.com/mzc3c65
http://tinyurl.com/mzc3c65
October 1, 2020
As with most reviewers, high marks for some, lower for others
My favourite was 1957 Chevy Bel Air. My seconds were Jimmy Hendrix, Live Large, Where The Boys Were.
I thought the main characters for each (and every) story was beautifully crafted and written. Obviously, I thought the story lines for my above list were ones I enjoyed more, perhaps identify with a bit more easily than the others and did get a laugh or two out of them.
My favourite was 1957 Chevy Bel Air. My seconds were Jimmy Hendrix, Live Large, Where The Boys Were.
I thought the main characters for each (and every) story was beautifully crafted and written. Obviously, I thought the story lines for my above list were ones I enjoyed more, perhaps identify with a bit more easily than the others and did get a laugh or two out of them.
September 2, 2019
This collection of short stories is very good: the characters feel real and are distressingly and authentically flawed. GV can paint a picture of words of the human condition.
It was neat to experience some great fictional tales set in Saskatoon.
I like GV's work that I've read so far (Homesick was 5 stars for me) and will keep reading!
It was neat to experience some great fictional tales set in Saskatoon.
I like GV's work that I've read so far (Homesick was 5 stars for me) and will keep reading!
December 10, 2021
An eclectic collection of short stories, set in Saskatchewan. I wondered as I read them, how much of the author is hiding in each story.
October 22, 2015
Guy Vanderhaeghe built his early reputation as a short story writer. His debut collection, Man Descending, secured him the first of two Governor General Awards in a career that has also garnered him shortlist nods for both the Giller and the Dublin IMPACT, among his many accolades. Arguably, his current reputation among readers is staked upon his more recent loose trilogy of novels, which terminated in The Last Crossing. Daddy Lenin marks Vanderhaeghe’s return to the short story genre after a twenty-three year hiatus. Evidently, time has not blunted his purpose.
The measure of a good short story should be how easily it can be held in the hand. Like a cut stone, the reader should be able to turn it over and hold it to the light – to enjoy the unity of purpose each facet contributes to its fashioning. The short story stays with you in a way the novel, in its length and complexity, cannot. A good short fits in the pocket. In this way, the nine stories of Daddy Lenin might be a master class in the genre.
These are the stories of men, primarily. Men searching for purpose. Men struggling for relevance. Men reflecting on lives lived and not lived. Men all too aware of the “tick tock” of their own mortality, and how their passage will be weighed or found wanting in the end. Even the teenaged Troy, in the collection’s opening story, “The Jimi Henrix Experience,” is forced to take a long, hard look at the abyss of an old man’s photo albumn. An experience which leaves him thinking, “It’s no different from staring into the blank television screen. The snow shifting, forming faces of famous people locked in the circuitry from old programs. The hiss of static turning into favourite songs, guitar chords whining and dying.” An experience so bleak and frightening that it leaves him “running through the late-afternoon stillness of an empty suburban street…where the sun is either coming up or going down.”
In similar fashion, the collection’s title story examines the recently retired, Jack Corbin – failed academic and disgruntled husband – who rediscovers an old mentor and professor whom he holds responsible for his unhappiness. Jack sets out to redeem himself, bolstered by a late opportunity to seek a revenge of sorts – against the man, against his wife. But Jack’s disappointment is foreshadowed in his inability to win a mid-story “staring contest” he unwittingly enters with a mysterious stranger. “Heart banging, he lowered his eyes, and before he knew it his feet were carrying him away…he couldn’t say why this Disney-enchanted-kingdom nightmare filled him with such anxiety and apprehension.” Like Troy, who had seen his future measured out in another man’s photo albumn, Jack comes face to face with his past and his present, “the place to which every step and misstep he had ever made had been leading him for years.”
In spite of these bleak endings, Vanderheaghe’s stories offer both humour and stoicism, as well. The former is best evident in the aging, acerbic tongue of Uncle Ted, in “Counselor Sally Brings Me to the Tunnel”; the latter, in the attitude of Billy Constable, who in “Live Large” catches “again the bird-like cloud on this morning’s horizon, when everything seemed salvageable.” But most importantly, these stories offer courage. In worlds where media and the working-class father figures of a bygone age have left Vanderhaeghe’s protagonists bereft of applicable role models, in steps Charley Brewster. The climax of “Tick Tock” should bring back images of Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino.
If you read short stories, this collection will confirm your faith in the genre. If you don’t, this just might convert you. The stories of Daddy Lenin are ultimately brilliant bits of prestidigitation, satisfying and full blown in their revelations.
The measure of a good short story should be how easily it can be held in the hand. Like a cut stone, the reader should be able to turn it over and hold it to the light – to enjoy the unity of purpose each facet contributes to its fashioning. The short story stays with you in a way the novel, in its length and complexity, cannot. A good short fits in the pocket. In this way, the nine stories of Daddy Lenin might be a master class in the genre.
These are the stories of men, primarily. Men searching for purpose. Men struggling for relevance. Men reflecting on lives lived and not lived. Men all too aware of the “tick tock” of their own mortality, and how their passage will be weighed or found wanting in the end. Even the teenaged Troy, in the collection’s opening story, “The Jimi Henrix Experience,” is forced to take a long, hard look at the abyss of an old man’s photo albumn. An experience which leaves him thinking, “It’s no different from staring into the blank television screen. The snow shifting, forming faces of famous people locked in the circuitry from old programs. The hiss of static turning into favourite songs, guitar chords whining and dying.” An experience so bleak and frightening that it leaves him “running through the late-afternoon stillness of an empty suburban street…where the sun is either coming up or going down.”
In similar fashion, the collection’s title story examines the recently retired, Jack Corbin – failed academic and disgruntled husband – who rediscovers an old mentor and professor whom he holds responsible for his unhappiness. Jack sets out to redeem himself, bolstered by a late opportunity to seek a revenge of sorts – against the man, against his wife. But Jack’s disappointment is foreshadowed in his inability to win a mid-story “staring contest” he unwittingly enters with a mysterious stranger. “Heart banging, he lowered his eyes, and before he knew it his feet were carrying him away…he couldn’t say why this Disney-enchanted-kingdom nightmare filled him with such anxiety and apprehension.” Like Troy, who had seen his future measured out in another man’s photo albumn, Jack comes face to face with his past and his present, “the place to which every step and misstep he had ever made had been leading him for years.”
In spite of these bleak endings, Vanderheaghe’s stories offer both humour and stoicism, as well. The former is best evident in the aging, acerbic tongue of Uncle Ted, in “Counselor Sally Brings Me to the Tunnel”; the latter, in the attitude of Billy Constable, who in “Live Large” catches “again the bird-like cloud on this morning’s horizon, when everything seemed salvageable.” But most importantly, these stories offer courage. In worlds where media and the working-class father figures of a bygone age have left Vanderhaeghe’s protagonists bereft of applicable role models, in steps Charley Brewster. The climax of “Tick Tock” should bring back images of Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino.
If you read short stories, this collection will confirm your faith in the genre. If you don’t, this just might convert you. The stories of Daddy Lenin are ultimately brilliant bits of prestidigitation, satisfying and full blown in their revelations.
November 24, 2015
All these 2015 Canadian lit award books have sort of fallen into my lap, and I've found the three short story collections to be rather enjoyable to varying degrees. This one was my favourite by quite a margin.
here we have short stories about men, often living in or reflecting back on their pasts in small Western Canadian towns. I wouldn't call this a "fun" book because the tales usually leave one with a rather bleak, depressed feeling, but the stories of intense characters and their explosions of personality, violence and desire keep the pages turning because you really want to know what's going to happen to these fellows. A feeling of tragic doom often hovers over proceedings even if individual scenes often bring about a laugh. It's surprising, perhaps, just how fragile some of these people turn out to be. They just don't always do the logical or right thing, and the results are bafflingly human and sad.
What I got from many of these pieces was a feeling that just one little mistake at the wrong time can scar a life forever. There's a sense that even though life has moved on for the men at the centre of the tales, they're not really ok and this might be because of something that went pear-shaped a long time ago and has been fermenting in the soul ever since. meeting the wrong girl at the wrong/pivotal time in the development of a boy brought up by strict religious parents. Deciding not to fight back that one time it just might be justified to do so. Adopting the wrong sort of role model. A childhood prank going horribly wrong after it's given you plenty of hoots for ages. Its' that sort of thing Mr. Vanderhaghe wants us to think about.
And I got a funny feeling from some of these because, damit, I know people like this. I just finished the last story, "Daddy Lenin", and yeah, I know a guy like the eponymous character. I can imagine him being like Kurt Jorgensen when he's an old man. he even latched on to the same sort of ideals. So I get this, perhaps more than is healthy. These stories sometimes made me feel a bit glum and upset; made me want to stay awake all night drinking hard liquor and laughing desperately at ribald comedy sketches, but I'm really glad for all that. I'd call this kind of conflicting response a job damn well done.
here we have short stories about men, often living in or reflecting back on their pasts in small Western Canadian towns. I wouldn't call this a "fun" book because the tales usually leave one with a rather bleak, depressed feeling, but the stories of intense characters and their explosions of personality, violence and desire keep the pages turning because you really want to know what's going to happen to these fellows. A feeling of tragic doom often hovers over proceedings even if individual scenes often bring about a laugh. It's surprising, perhaps, just how fragile some of these people turn out to be. They just don't always do the logical or right thing, and the results are bafflingly human and sad.
What I got from many of these pieces was a feeling that just one little mistake at the wrong time can scar a life forever. There's a sense that even though life has moved on for the men at the centre of the tales, they're not really ok and this might be because of something that went pear-shaped a long time ago and has been fermenting in the soul ever since. meeting the wrong girl at the wrong/pivotal time in the development of a boy brought up by strict religious parents. Deciding not to fight back that one time it just might be justified to do so. Adopting the wrong sort of role model. A childhood prank going horribly wrong after it's given you plenty of hoots for ages. Its' that sort of thing Mr. Vanderhaghe wants us to think about.
And I got a funny feeling from some of these because, damit, I know people like this. I just finished the last story, "Daddy Lenin", and yeah, I know a guy like the eponymous character. I can imagine him being like Kurt Jorgensen when he's an old man. he even latched on to the same sort of ideals. So I get this, perhaps more than is healthy. These stories sometimes made me feel a bit glum and upset; made me want to stay awake all night drinking hard liquor and laughing desperately at ribald comedy sketches, but I'm really glad for all that. I'd call this kind of conflicting response a job damn well done.
July 30, 2016
This award winning collection of short stories was an excellent example of high quality Canadian literature. With the backdrop of the Canadian prairies, the 9 stories explore an overarching theme of how a midlife crisis moment can create a collision course of past and present relationships for the central character- a seemingly down on his luck older gentleman. Though similar sketch of a main character was used, the stories did not feel repetitive. Good read!
August 17, 2015
All stories are exceptionally well written. They remind me of Updike' s. Great psychological insights in the characters. Why Is this author not more popular?
February 20, 2018
As usual, another great book by Guy Vanderhaeghe, this one a collection of short stories. These stories all seem to be about men at crucial moments in their life; teenagers coming of age, such as in "The Jimi Hendrix Experience", "1957 Chevy Bel Air", "Koeing &Company" and "Where the Bots Were" and older men facing the end of disappointing careers, as in "Tick Tock", "Live Large", "Daddy Lenin" "Anything" and "Counsellor Sally Brings Me to the Tunnel". In all of the stories the protagonists are facing a crisis or a defeat or some kind of crushing disappointment - business failures, failing marriages, deaths of loved ones. Some also face new worlds and opportunities, often women, sex and their own launch into adulthood. Some meet success, of dome sort, others end up staring into the abyss of their own wasted lives. The collection is an emotional look at young and old masculinity and how it can both bring an individual man's success or bring about his own defeat. It is a very well written book, the only reason I docked it a star is that some of the stories ("Tick Tock") reminded me a bit too much of one of the author's earlier books, "Man Descending" and I would have preferred a bit more of a difference. Maybe gets petty of me, as it echoes the strengths of that earlier book, but that is how it is. Still, a fantastic collection of short stories by one of my favourite authors (I'll even forgive the shot he takes at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructors).
April 21, 2020
Guy Vanderhaeghe is one of Canada's finest writers, and this collection of stories does not disappoint. The major theme through which these stories is shot through is nostalgia, in some cases for formative relationships that paid off somehow in the economy of the future ("Koenig and Company", "1957 Chevy Bel Air"), in some cases for the times right before the wheels more or less fell off ("Where The Boys Were", "Counselor Sally Brings Me To The Tunnel"), in still others for a glimpse of an identity never really grasped or established ("Anything", "Daddy Lenin"). Throughout there is sense of sadness in most of the protagonists, a sense that while things might have been worse, they sure as hell could have turned out better too, but there is no sense of condescension or pity on the part of the author. These characters are human and have dignity in spite of, and in some cases because of, their flawed personalities and skewed world-views. The two stories that act as psychological bookends in this collection for me are "Tick Tock" and "Live Large," both stories about men whose pasts have brought them to a present moment that is not what they had hoped for. In one case the protagonist responds with an act of surrender and contrition, in the other with an act of competitive joie de vivre. In both cases the response is both unexpected and yet appropriate, and like the rest of the stories in the collection, make a provocative impression upon the reader.
August 27, 2018
This is my first time reading Vanderhaeghe and I picked up this particular collection of short stories because it won the 2015 Governor General’s literary award. Each story is tightly constructed with efficient use of language and fully developed characters. Structurally and thematically, the stories all feel rather similar - a male protagonist looks back either longingly or broodingly to an earlier point in his life. While strongly written and page turning in the moment, the stories themselves don’t stand out individually nor do they leave a lasting impression.
January 7, 2019
Superbly written. Each story is full of life. I really enjoyed how Vanderhaeghe strayed away from the cookie cutter templates and gave the character real life. There are lots of themes explored in the stories especially, it seemed, failure. It seemed each story had some sexuality in it. Maybe they didn't all have it but it was a recurring thing. The author showed people with all the faults and the things that make us human and did so in very interesting and well written stories
February 11, 2018
An intense little collection of stories about various aspects of developing masculinity, sometimes in toxic form. It's full of anger, regret, frustration...and a bit of comedy in just the right places. Each tale is surprising, and the overall collection radiates the powerful awkwardness of men trying to find a place for themselves.
August 4, 2017
This collection contains several stories that were truly incredible and several that were sadly disappointing. My favourite might be "Tick Tock" which was moving and suspenseful.
Even in the worst of the stories it's clear that Vanderhaeghe is an excellent writer.
Even in the worst of the stories it's clear that Vanderhaeghe is an excellent writer.
February 3, 2019
A solid collection of short stories. While very androcentric, the stories nonetheless do a great job of capturing various aspects of the human condition with a delightful mix of compassion and cynicism.
I am looking forward to reading other works by this author.
I am looking forward to reading other works by this author.
November 30, 2016
Some stories were at a 2.5 and some were 4s but as that was not the majority, I landed on a 3. A talented writer and when it all works, the stories are memorable and how often can we say that!
May 14, 2018
To read Vanderhaeghe is to observe a master at work
October 18, 2018
“...one thing led to another, and now twelve months later [Eva and Brewster] found themselves peevishly staggering to the end of something that should never have started in the first place.” (p. 30)
January 3, 2020
I LOVED this book! The characters are so real and presented with a great sense of humanity.
February 28, 2022
A splendid collection. Enjoyable and a breezy read. 📚
July 8, 2024
Very similar to Alice Munro, with more city action and less countryside. Similar to the short stories of the Russian Cekhov. Short stories. Decent.
July 29, 2025
I almost never read short stories, but I really enjoyed this. Moving and effective. My favourites were "Where The Boys Were" and "1957 Chevy Bel Air." Always a sucker for a bittersweet (or just downright sad) coming-of-age story.
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