Swimming Toward the Light

Linda Perry is a senior policy analyst with the Ontario Ministry of
Colleges and Universities.

This book comprises a chronological series of short stories spanning the
life of a Cape Breton woman. Her life is surveyed through vignettes from
her childhood through to her life as a grandmother. The collection adds
up to a virtual novel, weaving together the lives of herself, her
sister, their parents, and their spinster Aunt Margaret. Each is a fully
realized character set in the complex interstices of the family unit.
The whole has a ring of genuineness, with all the immediacy and
familiarity of lived experience.

This is a very rich, intimate book of domestic incident. It explores
women’s relationships as daughters, nieces, sisters, wives, and
mothers. Men are described with a detachment verging on anthropological
objectivity. In counterpoint to familiar description, rendering real and
recognizable this family portrait, are gaping speculative chasms,
mysteries to challenge and tease.

The author is a commanding storyteller. Her command of language and her
skilled technique distil episodes of prose into spare poetry.