A Good Man, Guy Vanderhaeghe (McClelland & Stewart)
Many of the people who have been singing the praises of Patrick deWitt for reconstituting the Western in his novel The Sisters Brothers ignore the fact that Guy Vanderhaeghe has been doing this for the past 15 years. True, Vanderhaeghe prefers to work on a more epic canvas than deWitt, but in the three novels that constitute his recently completed loose trilogy – The Englishman’s Boy, The Last Crossing, and now, A Good Man – he has provided an interrogation of Western mythology every bit as powerful and revisionist as that of his Giller-nominated compatriot. A Good Man is easily the most ambitious book in the trilogy, and for my money, also the most entertaining. The characters – from the cynical ex-soldier Wesley Case to the villainous hired gun Michael Dunne – are as vibrant as ever, but A Good Man also boasts a strong political subtext, about the careful and ever tentative nature of the relationship between Canada and its bloodthirsty neighbour to the south. Vanderhaeghe’s battle scenes are stunning (and more than a little violent), and he seamlessly incorporates historical events and figures into his fictional milieu. If deWitt is our Charles Portis, then Vanderhaeghe has a strong claim to being our Cormac McCarthy.
