Leon Rooke

If you want to learn some Shakespearean-style cussing, this book narrated by Shakespeare's dog, Hooker, offers more than you will ever need. Some of the profanities are delivered with a familiar meter that will have you searching your mind for the original lines that might have been issued originally by the dog's master. Written in Elizabethan English this is ribald, rude and funny: but not for the faint-hearted.

Eleven tirelessly inventive stories and a novella; each has a certain flourish, a sense that the author is saying, "watch what I bust loose on ya this time," and it never grows old or seems contrived.

Magic realism in the short story, unless executed at a high level, often seems to be nothing but a gimmick adopted to relieve a writer of the chore of creating interest in a straightforward, realist narrative. It declares the story's originality with a blast of trumpets, shouts, "look at me, I show more am new." This is, no doubt, why it has become a staple of our little magazines. But there is no such cheap trickery here.

Rooke's stories are above all vocal performances; they're about voice. This is most obvious in the dialect-soaked novella, "Gator Wrestling"; at first, getting past the dialect is challenging, but then you adapt. And it offers up gems like this:
In Prissy's estimation Ganger was a boy of weirdly morbid and demented disposition. He was gravely barbecued in the belfry.
Not only barbecued, but gravely so, and in the belfry no less. Rooke, in this novella, invents his own idiom.

Standout stories in this volume include the hilarious "How to Write a Successful Short Story," in which a novice writer sits down to do just that, "Lamplighter Bridegroom 360," which proceeds not from character-with-problem but from the reader's curiosity as to what the heck is going on, and "The Last Shot," which won the CBC Literary Award.

Highly recommended. show less

This book sort of reminded me of Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water in that there is a lot of symbolism and mysticism as well as some native iconography. I'm still processing it so I don't think I've completely grasped the meaning of the book, especially the ending.

At its most basic, this book tells the story of the Daggle family. Joyel Daggle left her home, her husband and daughter a year ago. The husband, Raoul, and the daughter, Juliette, are driving west to try to intercept Joyel show more who was spotted in Cut Bank, Wyoming. Joyel, meanwhile, is driving east from Cut Bank. Each party meets interesting characters along the way. Raoul is particularly fascinated by priests who have fallen from heaven. Joyel meets Tom who tours with a giant wooden statue of Crazy Horse. These characters pop up frequently along the way and eventually everyone lands in the same small town during a blizzard.

I guess I am too linear in my thinking to be completely satisfied by the ending. To my mind there are too many loose ends. Like who is the man in the brown suit who has been following Joyel ever since she left California and why did the dog who hitched a ride with Joyel suddenly decide to be let out?

It is an entertaining read and Rooke certainly has a creative mind. It might appeal to someone more than to me. show less

This is a collection of imaginative bizarre surreal stories.

Here’s an example from ‘Magi Dogs’

I had no sooner finished my new painting, White Cottage with Green Shutters, when a dog poked its nose in the door, looked me over with only the mildest interest, then without further ado trotted up the painting’s cottage path, yawned, and at once dropped down asleep by the front steps.

In 'The Last Shot' devious twins Pam and Roy torment their care-taker, their blind grandfather, while show more their mother takes her ‘last shot’ at a relationship.

And the language...well best to record a little sample of that, too. This is from the novella 'Gator Wrestling'.
...she had viewed puberty, virginity, chastity, kissing, touching, and the like as doomed, gleeless bony old crows with snake hair and cloven hoofs, all heaped together on the back of a wagon riding bumpy ground into a grotesque black zone where light fizzed into deeper darkness the minute it was born;...
Whew. Quite a way with imagery. Okay, that example is a bit over the top but it does give you an idea of the treasures to be found.

Leon Rooke has won several literary awards. I'll be looking for his 1981 novel [Shakespeare's Dog] which won the Governor General's Award. show less