Review: 'Animal Person,' by Alexander MacLeod

"Lagomorph," the first of eight short stories in Alexander MacLeod's collection "Animal Person," begins, "Some nights, when the rabbit and I are both down on the floor playing tug-of-war with his toy carrot, he will suddenly freeze in one position." By now in David, the narrator's, life, his children have grown and his wife has taken a job in Toronto, leaving him alone with Gunther, the rabbit.

When Gunther freezes, "he'll look over at me and there will be a shift, his quick glance steadying into a hard stare." In that instant, David believes the aging rabbit empathizes with him over the loss of his wife and everything else that's gone on in the house for 15 years.

"Lagomorph" and the final story, "The Closing Date," describe the diminishing affection in two marriages, in the latter case partly because of an occurrence in a Halifax motel. Other stories, affecting stories, concern the strengthening of family and human bonds.

In "Everything Underneath," two sisters, snorkelers, learn how important they are to each other after an incident on a Nova Scotia beach.

In "Once Removed," a grand-aunt watches her relative disconnect a chandelier from the ceiling of a Montreal high-rise. During several radiant moments as his girlfriend and their baby look on, the four add a memory to family history. MacLeod writes about the chandelier, now relocated, "The light continued to break as it filtered down through the [crystal] shards, and it fell on the infant and the young mother and the old woman, alone and together ... surrounded by hoarded riches."

In "What Exactly Do You Think You're Looking At?" a traveler steals luggage from airport carousels. After going through the luggage, he returns it with an apology note and money. The most prized suitcase will have items shared by two people. "I would love to find that," the narrator confesses, "a single suitcase with two lives already mixed up in it, completely its own, completely itself."

Something is missing in these characters' lives until, like the rabbit and his keeper, they experience a breakthrough, "a single thought — vivid and urgent and distinct ... then it passes and the rest is everything else." The main thing for MacLeod's characters is to connect, if only for a moment.

In the moving "The Entertainer" (where I paused while reading to collect my emotions), a young piano player gets through his recital piece with the aid of an unlikely helper.

Alexander MacLeod's first collection, "Light Lifting," was short-listed for the Giller and Commonwealth Book Prizes and was a national bestseller in Canada.

Now the beautiful stories in "Animal Person." Though not all of them light up the dark world, many of them do.

Anthony Bukoski lives in Superior, Wis. He is the author of the story collection "The Blondes of Wisconsin."

Animal Person

By: Alexander MacLeod.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 243 pages, $27.