The Englishman's Boy - Hardcover

Vanderhaeghe, Guy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312168233 ISBN 13: 9780312168230

Publisher: Picador USA, 1997

Synopsis

The life of Harry Vincent, a young title-writer in 1920s Hollywood, collides with the story of a young drifter known as the Englishman's boy, who in 1873 joins a group of wolf hunters in the search for a ring of horse thieves, as Harry prepares to work on a movie being made about him some fifty years later

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Reviews

An ambitious novel, set along the US-Canadian border and in Hollywood, that won for its author (Homesick, 1990, etc.) Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award. The story consists of parallel narratives, the first taking place in 1873 when a band of ``wolfers'' (wolf-hunters) camped in the northern Montana Territory lose their horses to a furtive Indian raiding party. A determined posse pursues the thieves northward into Saskatchewan, where a terrible vengeance is exacted. Among those avengers are the mysterious title character, a stoical drifter who will become both the victim and nemesis of the men with whom he has cast his lot, and Shorty McAdoo, a Scotsman who will forever after be burdened by his failure to act as the ``civilized man'' he believed he was. The second narrative, set in 1923, recounts in his own words the ordeal undergone by Harry Vincent, a crippled journalist employed by playboy moviemaker Damon Ira Chance, a self-described ``visionary'' who longs to film an ``epic western'' incarnating his conviction that ``the spirit of the age would express itself in an endless train of images.'' Harry seeks out Shorty McAdoo's story, not realizing that Chance will betray his ostensible vision, and that he will also unknowingly betray the aged, guilt-ridden McAdoo. The two stories intersect in a melodramatic climax that, unfortunately, drains the novel of much of the integrity given it by Vanderhaeghe's sharply imagined confrontation scenes and salty dialogue. The novel has a lot on its mind, and few readers will leave it unfinished, but there's a paradoxical problem at its core: As gripping as the manhunt story is, its characters remain frustratingly opaque (even the haunting figure of the Englishman's boy only awkwardly inhabits the narrative); and, despite Vanderhaeghe's persuasive characterization of the appealing Harry, the story he's part of feels inchoate and derivative. Two good half-novels here, but they don't come together as a whole. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In alternating chapters, two narratives?one set in the American West, the other in Twenties Hollywood?gradually unfold and intersect. The Western saga centers around a boy who, after his English employer succumbs to a fever, attaches himself to a band of wolvers making their perilous way through hostile Indian territory into Canada. Fifty years later, in Hollywood, Saskatchewan native Harry Vincent is taken in hand by Rachel Gold, a so-called "new woman," as a scenarist for a studio headed by the mysterious and elusive Damon Ira Chance. Chance dreams of producing an epic Western in the tradition of his hero, D.W. Griffith, that will stand as a landmark of cinematic history. To this end, he hires Vincent to track down an old-timer whose story he is sure will lend itself to his purpose. This winner of the Governor General's award for fiction, Canada's top literary prize, has a sweeping scope and an evocative sense of time and place. We have Ludlum's spy stories, Grisham's legal thrillers, and Patrick O'Brian's sea tales, but on the quality literary front so dominated by fiction written by and appealing to women, it is a rare pleasure to be able to recommend one for the boys.?Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312168233
• ISBN 13: 9780312168230
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 333