"The King of Siam" is a book of thirteen short stories -- stories set at a dinner party between brittle friends; over a game of chess in a community centre; a visit to a racetrack in Vancouver; a poker room in Las Vegas. The characters in this book are at the fringes of society and the tattered edges of their own lives -- a teenage boy who defends his wastrel father for the first and last time; a cynical woman who attends a bizarre memorial service for someone she doesn't know, celebrating something she can't quite identify; an elderly woman, determined not to be a little-old-lady, who gets a tattoo. "The King of Siam" takes the reader into territory that is compellingly strange, hauntingly familiar.
