Cirrus@Austlit

'DREAMS of flight. A flight towards or a flight from? Dreams of hope or of despair? This rich but immediately accessible collection of short stories leaves it up to the reader to decide the answers. But the metaphor of flight is more intricate than the simple idea of birds allows, although there are many of them in these stories with different fates. Another underlying image is that of water in all its aspects. From sea, to lake, to stream, water can trap us or give us freedom, especially when it’s combined with air, such as the experiences of the young photographer in the story “Stalking the Light,” “She is here, now, in the impressions of the moment, with the solitary canoeist whose craft draws a long chevron on the rose-tinted surface of the water below; with the cohort of ibis silhouetted against the forget-me-not blue unveiled by dispersing cloud above; with the kingfishers and herons and magpies who frequent the early-morning river bank: here, now in the strengthening light.”' (Author's introduction)