[The Love Parlour, published in Canada, and The Broad Back of the Angel, published in the United States,] show masterful control of a variety of techniques. Rooke's concern is with love and the importance of personal relationships in an ever-increasingly impersonal society. He writes of desperate situations in a comic and sympathetic manner.

The "For Love of" series or Mexican trilogy presents a beautifully subtle put-down of the American tourist who can think of the Mexicans as the foreigners in their own country. At the same time, the stories are also a much more complex statement about the nature of the banal world in which we, the "norteamericanos", live. (p. 222)

"For Love of Gómez" the third story, is found only in The Love Parlour, which is unfortunate for the American anthology, as this story explains Rooke's reasons for the trilogy. The story expresses more blatantly the subtle...