Young Men

Geoff Hamilton is a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Russell Smith’s novels How Insensitive (1994) and Noise (1998) have
established him as the leading observer and satirist of “trendy
Toronto,” particularly as lived by those involved in the entertainment
and fashion industries. This short-story collection covers similar
ground as it explores the lives of young or youngish adults eager for
professional success, but reluctant to abandon youthful aspirations.

As always, Smith is impressively deft at rendering the dynamics of
failing relationships and the appeal of fast-lane glamor and
self-indulgence. In “Desire,” perhaps the best of the stories, the
writer Lionel Baratelli keenly notes the attractiveness of the city’s
young women as he passes through a restaurant and bar district. Arriving
home to his girlfriend, he sabotages their lovemaking when, in a
precoital embrace, he warns her, “No little babies.” Things fall
apart, and Lionel goes on to reflect on the ugliness of mothers
everywhere. All the “young men” in the collection are similarly
allergic to adult transitions, while the women, sensitive to
responsibilities and the emasculating vanity of prolonged adolescence,
suffer for it. “Desire,” “Responsibility,” and “Sharing”
survey the sadder implications of this reality, while Smith strikes
marvelously comic notes in “Dominic Is Dish” and “Young Men.”

A connoisseur’s appreciation for the precise details of dress and
urban idiom contributes to the writing’s sharp “This is Toronto”
feel. Whether burlesquing the excesses of the fashion crowd (“Dominic
Is Dish”) or the city’s multicultural gallimaufry (“Chez
Giovanni”), Smith brings his people and places to vivid,
particularized life. The only nagging flaw in the writing is the
occasional tendency to strain sentiment, most evident in the ending of
the otherwise charming “The Stockholm Syndrome.” Here Lionel
reappears, stranded in the Yarmouth outback and enduring a disastrous
book tour among well-meaning but clueless locals as his professional
life in Toronto unravels. He ultimately finds salvation in an elderly
woman with a storied past, but the turnaround seems miserably affected.
Happily for Smith’s readers, such lapses are uncommon, and they do
little to mar a potent, rewarding collection.