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Product Description
Review
“It is compulsively readable…and presents us with wholly credible people. This is realism at its best.…”
–Financial Times (U.K.)
“Vanderhaeghe’s considerable achievement in the novel is to explore the bleak landscape of contemporary relationships with uncommon insight and to create a memorable character who evokes our sympathy despite – or perhaps because of – his many frailties.”
–Globe and Mail
“[Vanderhaeghe is] a savagely funny writer.…[He] has created the perfect vessel from which to launch his kamikaze sorties into contemporary life.…He has created one of the more quirkily appealing characters in recent fiction.”
–Washington Post
“[A] masterful novel.…Not a single false note mars the author’s graceful, precise depiction of the present era and its pitfalls.”
–ALA Booklist (U.S.)
“[Vanderhaeghe is] an author of palpable and protean gifts.”
–Boston Globe
“My Present Age is black comedy at its intimate and subversive best.”
–Douglas Barbour, Canadian Literature
“Very nearly unique among present-day novels of any sort: like Philip Roth and almost no one else, Vanderhaeghe has the ability to make you root for the protagonist without setting up straw men or women for the protagonist.…”
–Greil Marcus, Express, Berkeley (U.S.)
“A fast, fluent and very funny novel.…This is a hilarious, bleakly realistic comedy about modern life’s conformists and casualties. Or more precisely, about what can happen when it’s finally time to grow up – and you can’t.”
–Imagine Magazine (U.K.)
“[A] wonderful first novel.…Brilliantly funny and very sad.”
–San Jose Mercury News
“Compassionate, humorous, and thematically important.”
–Bloomsbury Review (U.S.)
“A deftly done novel.…[My Present Age] is astonishing in conception and execution.…”
–San Diego Magazine
“An irresistible first novel.…An achievement.…”
–Spectator (U.K.)
“A beautifully sustained performance.”
–USA Today
–Financial Times (U.K.)
“Vanderhaeghe’s considerable achievement in the novel is to explore the bleak landscape of contemporary relationships with uncommon insight and to create a memorable character who evokes our sympathy despite – or perhaps because of – his many frailties.”
–Globe and Mail
“[Vanderhaeghe is] a savagely funny writer.…[He] has created the perfect vessel from which to launch his kamikaze sorties into contemporary life.…He has created one of the more quirkily appealing characters in recent fiction.”
–Washington Post
“[A] masterful novel.…Not a single false note mars the author’s graceful, precise depiction of the present era and its pitfalls.”
–ALA Booklist (U.S.)
“[Vanderhaeghe is] an author of palpable and protean gifts.”
–Boston Globe
“My Present Age is black comedy at its intimate and subversive best.”
–Douglas Barbour, Canadian Literature
“Very nearly unique among present-day novels of any sort: like Philip Roth and almost no one else, Vanderhaeghe has the ability to make you root for the protagonist without setting up straw men or women for the protagonist.…”
–Greil Marcus, Express, Berkeley (U.S.)
“A fast, fluent and very funny novel.…This is a hilarious, bleakly realistic comedy about modern life’s conformists and casualties. Or more precisely, about what can happen when it’s finally time to grow up – and you can’t.”
–Imagine Magazine (U.K.)
“[A] wonderful first novel.…Brilliantly funny and very sad.”
–San Jose Mercury News
“Compassionate, humorous, and thematically important.”
–Bloomsbury Review (U.S.)
“A deftly done novel.…[My Present Age] is astonishing in conception and execution.…”
–San Diego Magazine
“An irresistible first novel.…An achievement.…”
–Spectator (U.K.)
“A beautifully sustained performance.”
–USA Today
Book Description
Ed is punchy, unemployed, and on the wrong side of thirty. After his exasperated wife, Victoria, leaves him, Ed finds consolation where he has always found it, in his own rich and eccentric imagination. Pursued by the demons of his own obsession, Ed embarks on a quixotic quest to find Victoria. As he prowls the city’s parking garages and motel strips, Ed begins a journey back into his past and is forced – most reluctantly – to confront the web of lies and self-deceptions he has woven to keep reality at bay – until even his fantasies start to turn against him. Keenly observant, humane, and darkly comic, My Present Age is an irresistible story about what happens when an Everyman becomes a casualty of modern life.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Present Age,
By teenybash (Nanoose Bay,B.C. CAN) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: My Present Age (Paperback)
This is a very funny book, despite the trials and tribulations of the main character in the story. Written in the first person, we follow the "hero's" daily struggle to cope with his day to day existence.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
a novel about losing your way in life,
By "anonymous1979" (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Present Age (Paperback)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable and intriguing,
By
This review is from: My Present Age (Mass Market Paperback)
The Regina "Leader Post", the newspaper in the city near Guy Vanderhaughe's home town, described this book when it was published in 1984 as "A brilliant exhibition of style and wit." I suppose that sums it up.
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