Dislocations

L.J. Rouse was a freelance writer in Toronto.

These fourteen stunning short stories capture people of all sorts and conditions at those special, vulnerable moments when life catches them off balance: those times when they are uncertain yet must choose one path on another with binding consequences; when they must consciously change the directions of their lives.

Whether in Canada, South India, Australia or the United States, the likenesses among peoples are always more arresting than their superficial differences. The reader observes and comes to understand many varied situations: the bewilderment and frustration of the Indian father who struggles to understand his daughter’s new way of life in North America; the kaleidoscope of emotions surrounding the sudden death of an intimate friend; the uncomfortable transference of a festival and its attendant rites from one culture to another vastly different; the shattering moment in which a proud old man discovers himself to have become that which he both pities and detests.

Powerful and evocative, this collection of short pieces outshines even the author’s justly-praised full-length fiction.