This is a collection of twelve superbly crafted stories about males at various stages of life, but the settings for the fiction are vividly rendered and provide telling evidence of the modern age that breeds regret, impotent rage, comic exasperation, and bittersweet inertia. Human wisdom in these stories is not necessarily linked to urban sophistication, for in "The Watcher/' a marvelous story about a young boy's initiation into a world of adult conflict and treachery, an old hard-talking, quick-witted grandmother on a farm shows her skill with the ways of the world. Her daughter's lover, a sadistic bully from the city with supercilious contempt for rural life, is given a tough lesson in justice and treachery.

Family relationships are sharply etched in this book, with their span of love, resentment, teasing cruelty, and vanity. Vanderhaeghe explores with perfect poise the stifling enclosures for his characters...