Aley Waterman

Share with friends: Permanent Link: Farah Ali follows her lauded story collection, People Want to Live, with a first novel, The River, the Town, that shares similar aspects of spare, unblinking incisiveness. Moreover, it is delivered in three distinct voices covering three decades, with results not unlike reading interlinked short stories. These multiple perspectives form an intricate narrative, further complicated by unreliable characters.

The day I went to visit Graeme Patterson’s exhibition “Strange Birds” was marked by a dreamlike and melancholic encounter. After entering the Fine Arts Building on Grenfell University campus, I went to look out over the city before seeing the show. A large window and sliding glass door connected to a wide viewing deck, normally fully vacant, revealed in the left-most corner a small American goldfinch, lying peacefully on its side, feathers fully intact.