Animal
by Alexandra Leggat
Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-897535-01-1, 169 pp., $18 paper.

Toronto-based Alexandra Leggat is one of several young female writers who are breathing new life into the Canadian short story--Dede Crane, Saleema Nawaz, Jenn Farrell and Ramona Dearing are four others. Leggat already has two collections to her credit--Pull Gently, Tear Here in 2001 and Meet Me in the Parking Lot in 2004--and her latest, Animal, may be her best yet.

Leggat has mastered the knack of plunging the reader into an intriguing situation in the opening sentences. Whether her protagonist is going through a life-changing experience or finding herself on the brink of one, the reader is hooked.

In the hilarious story "Colt 45," Paige has dreams that recur every National Football League season, dreams of her playing for the Indianapolis Colts alongside Peyton Manning. They are so realistic, she thrashes around on the bed, continuously disturbing her boyfriend Al: "I flip back and forth into consciousness, can feel my legs flying up in the air, my body thrusting, arms flailing. I've never been aware of pummeling Al, but he swears that I knock him senseless every Sunday and Monday night." (160)

Al talks Paige into going to see a psychiatrist, and the resulting session is laugh-out-loud funny. "Colt 45" comes at the end of the book, leaving the reader on a high.

As knowledgeable as Leggat shows herself to be about football in this story, she is less assured about golf lingo. Early in "The Last Monsoon," she tells us, "The Mayor remembers bogeying the shot that won them the tournament." (43) Golfers will be quick to point out that you bogey a hole, not a shot (it means your score on the hole is one over par), and the Mayor was more likely to have birdied a hole to win (one under par).

On the way through these fourteen wildly varied and visceral stories, you encounter a remarkable variety of protagonists. In "Tourniquet," we find Lady, an actress before she married the town doctor Gabe, at odds with her husband because she had a landmark tree removed from their property. As townspeople mourn and say, "Poor, poor tree," Lady thinks, "My God, all those leaves, its roots infesting and plugging the sewer pipes, the flooding of the basement, it was a pain in the ass." (87)

Gabe tells her there's more to trees than meets the eye, and we become subtly manipulated by Leggat into wondering if there's any more to Lady than the roles she plays.

In "Apples and Rum," Ben and his much-younger third wife Meg move out to the country, something she's always wanted. Ben has no real interest in isolation or farming, and when he befriends a handsome neighbour named Samson, you're pretty sure he's scheming--and what a scheme it turns out to be!

"Scimitar" beautifully captures the troubled psyche of a woman who, in early middle age, has been dumped by the man she loves. She's waking in the middle of the night, sweating, and she can't concentrate on work. The strength of the story lies in her ongoing duel with her best friend Isabelle, who oscillates between comforting her and one-upping her in the misery department.

In "Sweet Tea," the female narrator visits her single-parent sister Maggie in Brooklyn and they sit on the fire escape to watch people on the street below. They enjoy potent drinks while they're preparing for a dinner party they're hosting. A man goes by with a beautiful husky dog and they contrive to invite him, though our narrator insists it's the dog she wants to meet.

One or two of the stories misfire, but the excellence of "Blue Parrot" makes up for them. Cass is at home in her messy house with her policeman husband Mitch at work, when Mitch's petite and pretty sister Lila arrives for a visit. Though Cass has been fortifying herself with booze, Lila quickly gets to her--"Cass wets her lips, fumbles with the ends of her fingers, unsure if she's going to punch herself, the wall, or Lila" (136). The edgy dialogue in this, the longest story, is perfect.

Alexandra Leggat has given us one more reason why short stories matter.

Dave Williamson is a Winnipeg novelist whose latest short story "Harassment" appeared in the spring 2009 issue of Prairie Fire.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

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