Description
Betrayed by his oldest friend, a boyhood companion, his gingerly constructed career at stake, Clyde Bryanton, a property developer and Ottawa political consultant, unpeels layers and layers of memory, a half century of getting along by going along. Fatherless, his sire a casualty of the Dieppe raid, Clyde is as baffled by the emotions that occasionally sound from his depths as he is by his mentors, banker and the senator who manipulate money and power in a small Canadian city. A stranger even to his wife, who dubs him ‘Silent Joe,’ he navigates social, familial, political and commercial obligations with the same cool skills he exhibits on the golf courses that weave in and out of the fabric of his life. The darkest of secrets become no more to Clyde than the bunkers and sand traps he avoids with his selections of irons as he gambles a mysterious five thousand dollars against access to the wife of an envied son of privilege. This latest novel by distinguished Canadian author David Helwig, describes a North America, whether Canada or the United States, of eyes on the ground and noses to the grindstone, of business as politics and politics as business, of kindness and malice and nameless fear. Clyde, is an incisive portrait of the generation that came of age in the 1960s, and of the culture that came to dominate the second half of the twentieth century.
About the author
Born in Toronto in 1938, David Helwig attended the University of Toronto and the University of Liverpool. His first stories were published in Canadian Forum and The Montrealer while he was still an undergraduate. He then went on to teach at Queen's University. He worked in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players, mostly as a business manager and technician, rubbing elbows with such actors as Gordon Pinsent, Jackie Burroughs and Timothy Findley.
While at Queen's University, Helwig did some informal teaching in Collins Bay Penitentiary and subsequently wrote A Book About Billie with a former inmate.
Helwig has also served as literary manager of CBC Television Drama, working under John Hirsch, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers.
In 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer. He has done a wide range of writing -- fiction, poetry, essays -- authoring more than twenty books. Helwig is also the founder and long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories annual. In 2009 he was named as a member of the Order of Canada.
David Helwig lives in the village of Eldon on Prince Edward Island, where he is the third Poet Laureate. He indulges his passion for vocal music by singing with choirs in Montreal, Kingston, and Charlottetown. He has appeared as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion and Mozart's Requiem.
