The Baby Can Sing and Other Stories introduces a writer who approaches the world at a surprisingly oblique angle. Judith Slater writes in a prose dance, dramatizing the lives of ordinary people who wonder what they can do to bring more passion into their lives, or at least less loneliness. The characters in these stories are a diverse bunch—a floral clerk with aspiration of being a ballet dancer, a photographer volunteering to take the pictures at his ex-girlfriend's wedding, a father playing the role of reluctant chaperone at his daughter's school dance—but all of them are alert to the moments of possibility, transcendence, and sometimes even magic that exist just under the surface of ordinary life.