A Bolt of White Cloth

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Reading Leon Rooke’s short stories is about as close as most readers need come to an out-of-body experience. His settings are almost realistic, but realism as viewed through a curved window frosted by magic. His people speak in what seem at first to be ordinary voices, but then one discovers that their words are only clues to the rich otherworld in which seemingly humdrum human beings live their real lives. What others see of them is merely the deceptive facade they present to the world. Haunting, off-beat, and provocative.