New Releases by Leon Rooke

‘Tonight / I’ll serenade you / With kisses / Modestly dressed...’ In Rank Songbirds, Leon Rooke deploys his playful wit and slantwise perspective to explore the joys and the burdens, the hilarities and the surprises of life in its absurd, charming, tragic minutiae. These are poems that revel in foibles, saucy verbal sparring and the possibilities of artistic expression while ever mindful of the fallibility of humanity, its voracious appetites, its complicit silences, its convulsive politics. And though it may be that ‘Those angels serenading us through / Hazardous night were rank songbirds chirping away / Mindless of hawks zooming overhead,’ these poems remind us that today is not to be confused with last week’s curse, that freedom is getting the high notes right and that, in a pinch, one might ‘apply love’s bandage to the shiftless heart / This minute pooling debris about your feet.’

When free-spirited teenager Zan sets out on her bike to buy kitty litter she has no idea she’s about to send her neighbour and maybe-sort-of crush Tallis into a months-long coma, kicking off a series of events both real and surreal that will change everything and everyone on her Toronto Annex street. Metafictional appearances are made by characters as diverse as J. J. O’Molloy, Chekhov’s Ryabovitch, an infamous lapdog and the indignant Rebecca Whitehall, heroine of fictional Sheila Shott’s steamy romance novels. As these and a multitude of others interact with the inhabitants of 2X8 Major Street, friendships, dalliances and alliances are formed and re-formed with uncommon results. Unexpected guests arrive ... and stay. Two questions overarch: Will Tallis ever wake up? And what will that mean for everyone?

The two novellas and three short stories in this new collection by the critically-acclaimed, North Carolina-born author Leon Rooke are united by place and mood. Set largely in the post-WWII American South, peopled by Watermelon Queens and ten-year-old business men, these joyful, touching, brilliantly crafted pieces speak to a time and sensibility long forgotten.

In Fabulous Fictions and Peculiar Practices, politics and economics sprawl comfortably alongside prurient dissertations on sex, marriage and aging as Leon Rooke and Tony Calzetta masterfully unfold a narrative of society’s indifference to the sorry plight of the artist. In this unique confluence of image and text, a pompous bank president delivers a rousing oration to his number cruncher clerks, and the painter Cézanne faces off against a disquieting muse and the cold rejection of the artistic community. Art critics, reveling in their own pedantry, find perverse enjoyment in professing ridiculous opinions. And God himself makes a cameo appearance—fearsome, irreverent and, it must be said, at times lecherous.... Satirical, playful and provocative, Fabulous Fictions is a madcap tour de force unlike anything you’ve ever seen or heard before.

April is pluck, prink and plumelets. April is an intellectual colossus who travels with a shotgun under her dress. Marriage to April is like the beauty of pure math ... or like juggling bricks in a hurricane. April is a pearl of a girl, mother and daughter, lover and beloved. April has spit. April is A Developing Story. In his newest collection of poetry, Leon Rooke, author of Hot Poppies, A Good Baby and the Governor General’s Award-winning novel Shakespeare’s Dog, presents a collection of poems about the beguiling, inimitable April. Adopting a variety of distinctive perspectives of her life, her loves and her losses, he builds a picture of his irrepressible heroine and the follies and foibles of the lives through which she passes. Rooke’s poems challenge and amuse, stimulating the senses and subverting expectations. His inventive language and imagery, and his cast of delightfully idiosyncratic characters, allow him to hold up a mirror to society and expose the planes and angles of humanity, all the bumps and hollows of it.

"An extraordinary novella, about a lesbian couple, Mady and Pope, habitués of Glasgow''s grim streets. Mady has been viciously murdered. Pope is in police custody, the lone suspect. In another writer''s hands, this stock situation might have yielded a book as ordinary in its pursuits as a pedestrian TV drama. But Rooke pours out his tale in Glasgow''s very own amazing street slang, empowering Mady and Pope - and a wide range of other misfits - with a strange, startling beauty"--Publisher description.

From one of Canada’s most compelling and imaginative writers of short fiction comes a new collection of eleven stories and a novella. With stories both magical and unexpected, Leon Rooke astounds with his approach to the art of storytelling. From the novella about the surreal adventures of Prissy Thibidault in the deep south watching alligator wrestling while white racists turn into blacks; to stories that include the strange wanderings of a boy called Dark in search of his mother; the escape of a couple of gay friends from their respective relationships for the bright lights of Paris; the negotiations with J.D. Salinger for a bag of his garbage; the torment that six-year-old twins inflict on their blind grandfather while their absent mother gives a boyfriend one last shot at romance; the unemployed man who helps to exterminate mosquitoes pleads his case before a judge about the capriciousness of his life; the painter who ruminates on magic dogs, reluctant models, and living with his ornery old father; the novice writer who hilariously tries to follow a how-to-manual; the survivor of a shut-in family who manages to burrow out of his suffocating lot; to a most unusual bank robbery that saves a woman’s life; here are fictional inventions that dazzle and engage. Writing within the aesthetic of magic realism, Rooke writes like a jazz musician, improvising and surprising with every sentence. Hailed by Russell Banks as "a North American treasure," Leon Rooke is surely Canada’s literary answer to the jazz great Miles Davis.

Recueil de dix-sept nouvelles qui jouent sur le registre des relations hommes-femmes, parents-enfants et humains-animaux. Littérature grinçante ou romantique, ces récits font valoir l''humour plus que la dérision.

According to Russell Banks, North Carolina ex-pat Leon Rooke''s work charts "what the short story form can and cannot do, for he works out there in the terra incognita mapping limits." Hitting the Charts, a nineteen story Best-Of compilation, offers stories as free from constraint as a Monk solo, and as disquieting and resonant as a southern Baptist preacher at a big-tent revival. Dancing is not forbidden.

Viva Straight, a single woman who works for the Refugee Board of Canada, has set off with her mother for their annual holiday in the Dominican Republic when their plane is mysteriously diverted to the Philippines. There she meets and has a night of bliss with the enigmatic Monsieur Epee, who presents himself to her imagination as the ideal man – apart, perhaps, from the fact that he is possessed of a beautiful wife already. So begins Leon Rooke’s exhilarating new novel populated by Viva’s extended family, numerous beautiful wives, seductive men, an unusual cat, Father Sin, the Sock People, the author himself and his researchers, a few ghosts, and even the shoe lady herself, Imelda Marcos. The Beautiful Wife is an endearing marvel of narrative invention and narrative drive. It explores the quest for love and the mystery of attraction between men and women, celebrating links between art and politics and romantic love. It demonstrates, as well, the miraculous pull of myth and the pure necessity of ideals. Hailed as a national treasure, Leon Rooke is a master conjurer for whom grief, love and laughter are essential ingredients, profoundly mixed. The Beautiful Wife is fresh proof of Rooke’s own astonishing imagination and the power of love.

`Everything from her mouth / I wrote down in a blue book.'' So begins Hot Poppies, a collection of poems by Leon Rooke, that grand master of the vocal jag and lyrical roar. Those who know Rooke''s fiction -- the Governor General''s award-winning novel Shakespeare''s Dog, for example -- will expect his first published poems to be rife with surreal flourishes, blazing language, sex, death, dogs and justice. All of these things are to be found in this blue book. So are Jasper Johns, (Lord) B, Princess Di, Lassie, Mahalia Jackson and John Cage. Hot Poppies is a riotous, extravagant book, fresh from the hot-house, but it is also seductive and subversive. Five-line love lyrics, full of epigrammatic spark, intersperse vitriolic satires on American electoral antics. Britney Spears goes to war with the squirrels, `hefty as flying raccoons,'' and James Tate''s condemned man talks hurricanes and death row dinners with his warden. Rooke writes poetry with the glitter-seeking eye of a magpie, discovering unsettling beauties in his hoard of cultural detritus and post-millennial dread.

Leon Rooke is one of Canada''s preeminent fiction innovators, a master of the short form, and a literary godfather to scores of writers. Here, for the first time, is the quintessential selection of his best short fiction, culled from a prodigious career and 15 story collections.In these beautiful affecting stories, both bittersweet and hilarious, Rooke mines the rich and often turbulent field of domestic life, of relationships between men and women, and of the fragile dislocations of young children. Included are classics such as "The Birth Control King of Upper Volta", "The Women''s Guide to Home Companionship" and "Early Obscenities in the Life of the World''s Foremost Authority on Heidegger". Always fresh and original, these timeless stories push the boundaries of the traditional short story form."Painting the Dog" is vintage Rooke: 17 highly original tales brimming with whimsy and wit, pain and poignancy, and the author''s endlessly astonishing and electric imagination and riotous humour.

Raoul Daggle, la quarantaine, part sur les routes américaines en compagnie de sa fille Juliette, onze ans, à la recherche de son épouse Joyel, disparue un beau matin on ne sait trop pourquoi. Pendant ce temps Joyel voyage aussi, menant de son côté une étrange échappée, entre fuite et quête... La vie est-elle jamais autre chose qu''un drôle de chassé-croisé ? Visages et paysages se succèdent, la nature qu''on avait un peu oubliée adresse aux voyageurs des signes mystérieux - jusqu''aux retrouvailles finales où la neige et le brouillard blanc, effaçant les faux-semblants de l''existence, reprennent leurs droits... Le " rêve américain " a décidément plus d''un tour dans son sac. Leon Rooke, que les lecteurs de langue française découvrent ici, s''en empare comme à contre-courant. Il ne chante pas les grands espaces, les épopées fondatrices - le monde chante très bien sans nous. Ses personnages se font un malin plaisir de tourner le dos à une société où chacun est convié à s''identifier à tout et à n''importe quoi : comme s''il leur importait d''abord d''aller à la rencontre de cette frontière intérieure que nous avons perdue de vue, mais qui existe bel et bien à l''horizon têtu de nos songes. " Leon Rooke est un magicien au chapeau inépuisable. Il nous entraîne ici au long d''un road movie (...) qu''il a su éclairer d''une lumière à la fois tendre et sombre, riche de toutes les séductions et de toutes les promesses. " MICHAEL ONDAATJE

Always fresh and original, these timeless stories push the boundaries of the traditional short story form. "Painting the Dog" is vintage Rooke: 17 highly original tales brimming with whimsy and wit, pain and poignancy, and the author''s endlessly astonishing and electric imagination and riotous humour.

From a master conjurer of fictional invention comes an irresistible high octane road novel that propels the reader through breathtakingly original landscape replete with unforgettable characters and extraordinary adventures. Raoul Daggle is desperately searching for his disappearing wife on the lam. She has been sighted in a number of different states and provinces. Obsessed, he drives across the continent in his brand new Infiniti 2000 trying to track her down, all the while engaged in the most hilarious dialogue with his precocious ten-year-old daughter Juliette. Meanwhile, his wife, Joyel Daggle, drives madly to escape them across the same landscape but in slightly altered time and space. Told with the inspired wit of a magus in love with a wicked world, this is a deeply affecting magical mystery tour of a dislocated psyche and one family’s passage through the dark night of the road into unexpected sunny uplands. Here is the critically acclaimed novelist and short-fiction writer Leon Rooke writing at his very best. The Fall of Gravity is a novel to make one whistle and sing with sheer joy of its infectious elan.

A year before "Lewinsky" became a household name, Leon Rooke was at work on this novel about an aging right-wing southern senator''s shenanigans with interns; fraudulent Vietnam War heroes; and the real players in the Washington power playpen: the doorman at the Watergate, the local mafia don and his floozies, and the no-neck "spin-doctors" who "clean up" after the celebrities.

In his first short story collection in five years, Leon Rooke brings together an extraordinary array of documents from diverse hot spots around the world. In an attempt to answer the question What is art?, the stories explore Italian "art," Mexican "art," Gypsy "art," Native "art," and political "art."

"Muffins" is a square; it has a vinyl cover of a photograph of Rooke and his wife and another woman (their daughter?). The photograph-cover, if one reads'''' it closely, shows the daughter reading a book; her back is facing her parents who are at a table eating -- or about to eat -- muffins. There is a book case stuffed with books arranged'''' in a messy way. The photograph has in the middle a rectangle in white lines and the words in different typefaces (and colours): "Muffins" and Leon Rooke under "Muffins." The effect is startling because I see photographs of books within the book itself. And I am thus aware that there is a carefully designed book-within-the-book. And I start thinking about the "relation" of the various elements I have mentioned. Is the cover the beginning of the book? Does it, on the contrary, tell a secret story? I see, finally, that I as reader or viewer must interpret the relations, must join -- or create -- the "performance of interpretation." In a sense, then, I am writing a review of the photograph of the author. And I have not yet opened "Muffins"! My consciousness is whirling!''