Stories from the Vinyl Café: 10th Anniversary Edition

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

There’s nothing fussy about Stuart McLean. When he was in Hamilton,
Ontario, last year doing a reading of Stories from the Vinyl Café, he
joked with audience members that they could work on a sink of dirty
dishes at the back as they listened to him talk, if it would make them
feel more at home. The audience, at first caught off guard, roared with
laughter. McLean definitely knows how to make people feel comfortable.

For the last decade, CBC listeners have rolled up their sleeves, done
the dishes, and followed the lives of McLean’s fictional Canadian
family: Dave; his wife, Morley; and their two children, Stephanie and
Sam. Dave and Morley could be any of us, really, worrying about
mortgages, holidays, and our children’s sudden desire for nose rings.
There’s nothing especially remarkable about Dave or Morley, and
that’s what makes them so likeable.

McLean has a talent for presenting life and making it just a little bit
richer. Humour is funnier, tragedy is sadder, and the bittersweet is
that much more poignant in his hands. The ordinary lives of Dave and his
family serve as a backdrop for vivid storytelling, and the juxtaposition
always works.

This collection includes some fantastic stories; among the most
memorable are the ones that deal with fathers and their children. For
example, hockey in this book is more than just a sport. From comic
encounters with jockstraps to the brutality of being cut from the team,
hockey really serves as a common language between a boy and his dad. And
the careful dance between Dave and the teenage Stephanie over a rock
concert is priceless, particularly when it dawns on him that deep down
she really does want him to say no.

Stories from the Vinyl Café, in short, is an intelligent and
warm-hearted masterpiece.