Tell Him You're Married

In linked short stories imbued with wry humor, brutally frank honesty and caustically banal dialogue, women and men argue, make love and taunt each other mercilessly. Parents and kids don't get along: "We love you ..." says a character in "Hard Line" to which his father responds: "Bullshit. I'm going to kill myself tonight." And the son's response? A deadpan, "You've said that before." People on the cusp of middle age, who should know better, play dangerous drinking games, as in "Friends." And more than anything, the middle-aged narrator —just over a bad marriage and taking university-level drama classes to "get over it"— always seems to be surrounded by women willing to comfort him when he needs it: "If you need me," says one of these women in the story "Family," "Come over. Anytime. I'll do anything you want. Anything."

Reading Rogal's stories is like acting on this woman's proposition: so easy and so enjoyable. But like the world of theatre Rogal invokes in many of his stories, where it's sometimes hard to tell whether people are really good actors, or if they're actually feeling what they're telling you, the stories in Tell Him You're Married suspend your disbelief so effortlessly that you put the book down and marvel at the seduction that has been "performed."

In linked short stories imbued with wry humor, brutally frank honesty and caustically banal dialogue, women and men argue, make love and taunt each other mercilessly.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) - Judith Fitzgerald

It's bitingly intelligent, comprehensively truculent and compulsively readable... a feast for those among us starved for page-turning prose of distinction.

Stan Rogal has authored two novels, Bafflegab and The Long Drive Home, two short story collections, What Passes for Love and Restless, all from Insomniac Press, as well as six books of poetry (including Sweet Betsy from Pike and Geometry of the Odd). He is co-artistic director of Bald Ego Theatre, and his plays have been produced across Canada.