Betrayed by his oldest friend, a boyhood companion, his gingerly constructed career at stake, Clyde Bryanton, 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, the banker and the senator who manipulate money and power in a small Canadian city.
A stranger even to his wife, who dubs him 'Joe the Silent', 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 becomes no more to Clyde than the bunkers and sand traps he avoids with gritty tactics and clever selection of irons.
This latest novel by distinguished Canadian author David Helwig, describes a North America 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 our post postmodern culture of opportunism and rootless communication.
