Crosswinds

Beverly Rasporich is an associate professor in the Faculty of General
Studies at the University of Calgary and the author of Dance of the
Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro.

Byrna Barclay, the author of three superb novels and one collection of
short stories, is not as well known as she should be. A frequent
portrayer of Swedish-Canadian immigrant realities, Barclay is an amazing
storyteller whose multiple fictional styles include
stream-of-consciousness collage, contemporary mythmaking, and intimate
realism. Unlike her first collection of stories, From the Belly of a
Flying Whale, which is largely about the dark realities of people who
live on the fringe, Crosswinds is a collection of 12 beautifully crafted
stories about middle-class women caught in the crosswinds of middle age.
Their experiences of divorce, aging parents, new love, and longstanding
friendships are presented realistically, viewed retrospectively, and
interpreted with sagacity and self-understanding.

Many of the stories explore female relationships: between mother and
daughter in the heart-wrenching tale of an aging mother who lives in the
past and wanders as her thoughts take her (“Where My Mother Goes”);
between female friends in “Tulips,” in which Mayi stands by her
middle-aged friend Polly as she aborts a Down’s syndrome fetus;
between a niece and her unmarried aunts in a story of female genealogy
and dying (“Someone from the Other Side”). Suggestive of Alice
Munro’s narratives, particularly when they evoke moments of epiphany,
these stories are nevertheless distinctly original creations. Like
Munro’s fiction, they are addictive, whetting the reader’s appetite
for more.

The book’s cover is as seductive as the fiction. The painting Venus
from a Northern Pond by Canadian artist Mary Pratt is a compelling,
mysterious portrait of a woman in water, suggesting the submerged depths
of Barclay’s characters.