A Story About Golf, Sex, Money, Memory… and the Search for Meaning 

A FUNNY, PROFOUND, SLYLY POETIC EXPLORATION OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN LIFE, LOVE, BUSINESS & POLITICS

Since the late 1960s, David Helwig’s consistently impressive output of poetry, essays, novels, and non-fiction has made him one of Canada’s most highly regarded and beloved storytellers. A member of the Order of Canada and Poet Laureate of Prince Edward Island, he is the author of more than forty books across a range of genres, for which he has received the Belmont short-story award, the CBC Poetry Prize, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, and a lifetime achievement award from the Writer’s Development Trust.

Helwig’s latest novel, Clyde [Bunim & Bannigan, Ltd] – published in hardcover in 2014 to much critical acclaim – is set for release in e-book format on June 15, 2017. The story of a successful Ottawa investor and political consultant – very much representative of the post-WWII, Baby Boomer generation – who, in the wake of betrayal by his childhood best friend, sets about to review his past and the people who have shaped his life (“a half century of getting along by going along”) – critics and contemporaries have called Clyde “a novel of sly humour, as if Ian McEwan met Kingsley Amis and they wrote a book together” and “Helwig at his best.” 

Clyde’s narrative spans Ontario’s grim post-war 1940s through the bourgeois 1990s, and is singularly rooted in the recollections of its namesake character – a stranger even to his wife, who navigates social, familial, political, and commercial obligations with the same cool skills he exhibits on the golf course. Baffled by his emotions and generally what one might call “morally ambiguous,” Clyde is emblematic of a generation of men who came of age after the Second World War – and in him, readers may find themselves staring into a terrifically entertaining, if vaguely unsettling, mirror.

“Be it a real estate transaction or a lovers’ tryst, few writers can bring you into a scene – and make you want to be there – as well as Helwig,” says librarian Simon Lloyd of the University of Prince Edward Island’s Robertson Library. “Clyde treats universal themes of loyalty, love, death, and the search for meaning,” he continues, “while remaining wonderfully readable and entertaining.”

About the Author:

David Helwig is the author of more than forty books in many genres. He is a founder and long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories annual. His journalism and reviews have been widely published. He wrote regular columns for the Globe and Mail from 1990 to 1992, and created many radio and television scripts for production by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has been a jury member for the Canada Council, the Governor-General’s Awards, and the Arts Councils of Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick and PEI. He is the recipient of the Belmont short-story award, the CBC Poetry Prize and the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He has been given an award for lifetime achievement from the Writer’s Development Trust and is a member of the Canada Council. He lives in the maritime province of Prince Edward Island.