Things as They Are?

Hugh Oliver is Editor-in-Chief, OISE Press.

This latest collection of stories from the 1982 winner of the Governor
General’s Literary Award for fiction is an unqualified delight.
Whether the stories are told through the eyes of a young boy, a
middle-aged woman, or an old man, the perspective is equally convincing.
Vanderhaeghe’s descriptive imagery is that of poetry and yet one is
never aware of him straining to be poetic. His stories have drama but he
avoids being melodramatic, weaving an artistic web out of the strands of
everyday life. His characters and themes are both particular and
universal, contemporary and timeless.

The last story, from which the book takes its title, is about a writer
named Jack whose literary luminary (and, one suspects, also the
author’s) is Chekhov. “The famous objectivity, the pitiless refusal
to delude oneself, to see clearly and not lose heart was, for Jack, the
mystery of Chekhov’s conscience as a writer and a man. The acceptance
of things as they are. It was the gift Jack wanted most.” It is the
gift that, question mark in the title aside, Vanderhaeghe possesses.