To give us such a clear understanding of the lives of the poor and the disaffected, western writer Leon Rooke must have spent a lifetime soaking up their mannerisms, their conversations, and learning to hear their private voices of disappointment and discontent. The result, in Death Suite, is a carefully crafted collection of tactile, poetic prose.

The book opens with "Mama Tuddi Done Over," the longest story in the collection and an introduction both to the monologue style and to Rooke's spirit-world. (p. 75)

The choice of "Mama Tuddi Done Over" as the introductory story to Death Suite is a wise one, for the succeeding stories contain echoes of its eerie tone and its acute sense of language in the way one individual may use it. (p. 76)

Rooke seems best suited to describing the darker side of love relationships, as he does in "Winter Is Lovely, Isn't Summer Hell...