Pull Gently, Tear Here is critically acclaimed poet Alexandra Leggat's first collection of short stories. In these short tales about fitting in, the lives of the characters are pulled in circles as pieces of their identity are torn away by the day to day events shaping their lives. In 'Dodger', a young boy who escapes his abusive family searches for empathy from petty criminals and an affluent woman whose flawless life cracks when their worlds cross paths. In the satirical story, 'Acrylic Dreams', Leggat reveals that something as superficial as nail polish can produce a radical effect on men. And in the poignant 'All Trapeze Artists and Clowns', we experience one character's struggle to achieve the trappings of success in life — the happy relationship, the satisfying career and the proud family — then, upon attaining these treasures, realizing that it's not all it's cracked up to be.
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Poet Alexandra Leggat has written an extraordinary collection of short stories. The brief pieces of Pull Gently, Tear Here--some little more than a page long--feature a poet's spare style. Often, the stories read like instructions from a director to an actor, and like the best actors, Leggat needs few words to create a mood or establish a scene. Leggat's nameless characters are predominantly women nursing their melancholy and regret. A young woman compares her life to her older neighbour in "Double Diamond": "They both should have been sleeping beside the men who should be watching over them. The men that kept them up." In "Dairy Products," two drunken friends describe their temporary men: "She tells me her boyfriend's creamy. … I tell her my boyfriend's like a wave, he can't be immobile, has to keep moving and I'm stuck on him by the bittersweet glue of dreams." There are occasional moments of dark levity: in a waitress's numb boredom in "Fixed," and in the wry answer of a woman drinking tea alone in "From the Inside" who tells an intrusive stranger she lives on "hopes, dreams and Tylenol Extra Strength." Leggat deftly draws you into the discontent of characters whose lives need not be so sour but for the failure of their desire. Pull Gently, Tear Here is a brilliant effort by an emerging talent. --Moe Berg
About the Author
Alexandra Leggat studied journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto. Her collection of poetry, This is me since yesterday, was published in the spring of 2000. Pull Gently, Tear Here was nominated for the Danuta Gleed First Fiction Award. Her poetry, fiction and articles have been published in magazines across Canada and in the U.S.
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