Description
Populated by media personalities, literary characters, three-legged deer-like creatures and an array of idiosyncratic Toronto neighbours, The House on Major Street is an internal and external picaresque tale that begins with a dramatic bicycle accident and explores, along the way, the blurred boundaries between the stories we read, the stories we tell and the stories we live.
About the author
An energetic and prolific storyteller, Leon Rooke's writing is characterized by inventive language, experimental form and an extreme range of characters with distinctive voices. He has written a number of plays for radio and stage and produced numerous collections of short stories. It is his novels, however, that have received the most critical acclaim. Fat Woman (1980) was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and won the Paperback Novel of the Year Award. Shakespeare's Dog won the Governor General's Award in 1983. As a play, Shakespeare's Dog has toured as far afield as Barcelona and Edinburgh. A Good Baby was made into a feature film. Rooke founded the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 1989. In 2007, Rooke was made a member of the Order of Canada. Other awards include the Canada/Australia prize, the W O Mitchell Award, the North Carolina Award for Literature and two ReLits (for short fiction and poetry). In 2012, he was the winner of the Gloria Vanderbilt Carter V Cooper Fiction Award. Recently, Rooke's works The Fall of Gravity and Shakespeare's Dog were produced in new editions for France and Italy, two countries where his work has been greatly admired.
Awards
- Long-listed, ForeWord Indies Book Award
Excerpt: The House on Major Street (by (author) Leon Rooke)
The one window of Tallis Haley's second-floor room looks out over an exquisite garden. In this garden stands a fine sculpted fountain, erected overnight by unseen hands. So it seems. Because when Tallis Haley-the comet, man! Weird light! Watch that little shit go!-was removed from Children's Hospital and restored to his own bedroom, the next-door site was a rubble-strewn field. He remembers this clearly. Yes, and rolling hills, trees, swollen streams. Teepees. Muskrat and chipmunk, buffalo!
From a high limb you could see all the way to Winnipeg. Turn a snitch and there is ... Buffalo.
Another century.
Each night now, in the dead of night, no less than a dozen women perambulate, with elaborate cries of ecstasy and considerable expertise in the charm area. A dream. Oh, it's a dream, by anyone's account. Bewitching, yes, a joyful ceremony. And every night, you understand, which is hard on a boy in the comate status.
Fantastic events unfolding, here at 2X8 Major.
Ask Daisy, ask Emmitt. Inquire of anyone.
Chekhov is rumoured to abide here.
[Continued inThe House on Major Street...]
Editorial Reviews
[On appearing as a character in The House on Major Street:]
'Leon flatters me and of course I'm delighted to be so used by a writer I respect so much. Steve Temple will feel the same I'm sure. Richard Landon, sadly gone now, would be equally flattered by Leon's very accurate picture of his rapacity-except he would sneer at Leon and goad him by saying the Fisher ''already has three copies of it''.
'I shall inquire of Leon, next time I see him, just what he means by ''dishevelled'' in reference to myself. He only sees me in places where drinking occurs, not in my professional guise where like all greedy dealers I'm always slick and charming. Looks like it's to be a must-read book.
David Mason, proprietor, David Mason Books
Other titles by
Rank Songbirds
Fabulous Fictions & Peculiar Practices
Painting the Dog
The Best Stories of Leon Rooke
Shakespeare's Dog
Twentieth Anniversary Edition
The Fall of Gravity
A Novel
The April Poems
Wide World in Celebration and Sorrow
Acts of Kamikaze Fiction
Pope and Her Lady
A Novella
The Last Shot
Eleven Stories and a Novella
