2000 short list:
Young Men
by Russell Smith
published by Doubleday Canada
Set among the bustling restaurants, sidewalk cafes, sleek bars and ethnic neighbourhoods of Toronto, the stories in Young Men chart the lives of men colliding with the adult demands of career, home and family but reluctant to surrender their youthful aspirations. These tough-minded, fast-talking characters protect inner turmoil and secret vulnerabilities, their hard edges hiding fluid centres. This critically acclaimed, bestselling collection showcases Russell Smith's sharp ear for dialogue, keen eye for detail, and unerring ability to spot the comic potential in the most desperate of situations.
Russell Smith
Russell Smith is a well-known journalist and novelist. His 1994 bestseller, How Insensitive, was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and Ontario's Trillium Book Award. His second novel, Noise, published in 1998, received widespread attention and critical acclaim. An accomplished journalist, Smith's articles have been published in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Flare, Details and NOW. His story, "Party Going," included in Young Men, won the 1997 National Magazine Award for fiction.
Smith was born in South Africa in 1963, spent a year living in England as a child and grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, becoming a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1972. He currently writes a weekly column for The Globe and Mail. He also co-wrote an episode of a television documentary series on the history of sex in the twentieth century, called The Sexual Century, which was broadcast on the History Channel last year. In addition, he has written a one-hour radio documentary for CBC Radio, Ideas, called "Tick Tock Bang: Noise in modern art," in which he discussed the theme of noise in visual, literary and musical arts in both high and mass culture in the past century. He is a serious fan of techno music, and recently attended the I-Dance rally in Nathan Phillips Square along with 12,000 other ravers.
Russell Smith lives in Toronto.
Book excerpt
He stepped into the air, blushing. It had started to snow. He walked along Queen, back towards the mall and the subway. He was moving fast, but he stopped in front of the skating rink because the guy in the Team Canada jersey was circling the rink alone in the bright light, one hand behind his back. The crowd had cleared the rink for him; they were all along the sides, watching. The jersey flashed red and white, an old jersey, a logo from the seventies, but familiar, the maple leaf slanted and cut in half. It touched James in some way he could not pinpoint seeing it. The guy had built up a knifing speed, was whipping around the little rink doing crossovers the whole way, his body on a slant. It looked as if he was being swung at the end of a rope.
As he did his jump, a great spinning leap in the centre of the rink, the crowd oohed and applauded, and James saw it was the team logo from the first Canada Cup of 1976 and he laughed out loud without knowing why. The guy touched down like a gull on water and he bowed as he came to a stop at one end of the rink, sending up a shower of ice.
James shivered. The snow glittered in the fluorescence. The skaters were again filling the ice with pom-poms, leading teetering kids around, falling over. The white-and-red jersey was flickering out of sight behind the rink. He wanted to catch up with the guy, find out where to get one. And his throat was choked, which was silly. His eyes were watering because of the wind. He turned towards to subway entrance and moved quickly. It was just that he had actually watched that series as a kid, the great 1976 series with Tretiak and Kharlamov and Sittler and Lafleur, and he hadn't seen that jersey in years. There were now tears on his cheeks, which amazed him. It was silly, but it was just, perhaps, it must be just because he hadn't seen one in so long.
Out side the subway, the snow came down like light.
