Tango on the Main

by Joe Fiorito

In this award-winning collection from his Montreal Gazette city columns, Joe Fiorito reveals the true heart and soul of a large city. He walks the streets, meeting and talking to the people who make the city tick but never make the front-page news. In Tango on the Main he introduces us to Jackie of the Ritz, Montreal's chambermaid to the stars...the itinerant who reads Tennyson and drinks his daily pint of vodka on the McGill campus...the former featherweight champ who spends his mornings at the gym and his afternoons taking care of his ailing wife -- to name but a few of the memorable characters whose lives he explores.

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[Lucile Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

5. Tango on the Main – Joe Fiorito
This is a collection of Fiorito’s Montreal columns and they are more like prose poems. He is able to capture people and places. He watches as a young girl gets a tattoo, as a chambermaid talks about the famous people who have stayed at the Ritz, as an alcoholic claims his daily bench on the Mcgill campus to drink his vodka while he reads poetry, wrestlers, boxers. He talks about the death of his father, how his dog ended up on the Ed Sullivan show. He has been just as effective in his work for the Toronto Star. Fiorito has won many awards for his work and has written novels. I am hoping that now he has retired, we will see more of his fiction.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vintage Fiorito columns from the Montreal Gazette, back in the day. An outsider provides brief glimpses of other outsiders, those invisible to the elite, who make a difference in our lives. Everyday. Little life lessons, but without the preach. Just a dash of Joseph Mitchell.