The next book I am going to read is this one by a guy from Truro, Leo McKay Jr. Well, he works in Truro, gets paid to walk the halls of CEC and - unlike every other person I know who walked the halls of CEC and thought about getting a book published - he actually gets books published. Truro probably calls him theirs now. His short stories from 1995's Like This were so good that (aside from being nominated for the Giller) Mark, when he got his copy mailed to him in the UK, said "I could have written this". Mark was right and he was wrong. Only someone who knew ordinary life growing up in Colchester and Pictou counties in the 1980's could have written the stories. But more than we who were taught in CEC or Trenton High or Pictou Academy, who may also make our livings with words in law or news but could not trick out a story off a page if our lives depended on it, McKay in Like This drew out of the ordinary and left it ordinary but true...like Callaghan and Munro did before him...and like Atwood only dreams of if she had the sense. Alistair MacLeod with out all that Caper bigness.