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The common perception of time, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is that it is linear, moving ever into the future, away from a point of origin. Other conceptions, however, see time as cyclical in the recurring pattern of the seasons and the passage from day to night and then back again. Such a vision of time looping back on itself, coupled with an investigation into the role of memory, provides the framework for Byrna Barclay's latest short story collection, Girl at the Window, nine stories which explore the boundary between past and present.

Girl at the Window is Regina-based Barclay's eighth publication. Her previous work includes Saskatchewan Culture and Youth First Novel Award winner Summer of the Hungry Pup, as well as Saskatchewan Book Award Best Fiction winner Crosswinds, and nominee Searching for the Nude in the Landscape. The stories in this collection are connected not only thematically, but also by the fact that the characters are the descendents of, or are themselves immigrants to the Saskatchewan prairies, by an abundance of strong female characters, and by the recurrence of people and places throughout the stories.

The first thing that struck me about this collection is its careful and often poetic use of language. The first story, "The White Mountains of Crete" details Zoe's attempts both to remember and to forget her experiences during the Greek Civil War. The description of her reluctance to revisit the torture she suffered in her homeland uses language that demands an attentive and considered reading:

She never spoke of the islands of Trikeri and Makronisos again, not even to Zorzis, not even when she stood naked before him, between his knees, his head where her breasts once were, the palms of his fleshy hands pressed against the crescent scars. Then opening his hands, as if her chest were a cage and he would release a captured bird, he laid his salty lips against them.

At other times, Barclay's use of language is more playful and colloquial - the title story's presentation of Paula's headband that "keeps slipping over her shiny bangs as if it wants to become a blindfold," or the passage in "Hoodwinked" describing ostriches, "those eternal breeders, with their thick black eyelashes and aphrodisiac nails that when ground into powder and ingested can make a dried-up woman or limp-wicked man climb fences and scale stiles and leapfrog rivers to get laid if the object of his or her desire waits on the other side."

An abundance of strong female characters is another highlight of this collection. Throughout Girl at the Window we meet women who have left their homelands to make new lives in the often inhospitable prairies, women who have been left to raise children alone, women who refuse to follow conventional gender roles. Zoe's strength in the face of torture and mutilation, and her refusal to bow to the wishes of her father and others that she stay at home like a proper Greek wife are inspiring, but so in their own way are less momentous examples of resiliency demonstrated by other female characters. Rhea's decision to live down the street from her lover for forty years rather than with him in "Hoodwinked," the passing on of property through the female line in "Dream Catchers," and the unrestrained sexuality of Daphne's mother in "Summer Plague" or Mad Joan in "Girl at the Window" are just a few examples.

While these women are not often rewarded for their unconventionality, either by their respective societies or by the author herself, they nonetheless present a vision of women's lives that is much broader and more individual than the limited confines of expected female behaviour would suggest. And who wouldn't wish for themselves the level of self-confidence and grace under pressure of Phoebe, the protagonist in "Bride's Lament," on the occasion of her war-time cotton panties making an untimely plummet to her ankles: "Stepping out of them, whisking them up and into her clutch bag, she lifts her pointed chin, sticks it out, and says, 'I'm not accustomed to dropping my drawers for a man.'"

What really ties the stories in Girl at the Window together, however, is the exploration of issues of time, memory, and remembrance. Although other writers have explored the question of the reliability of memory, that isn't the focus here - there doesn't seem to be much suggestion that people's memories are inaccurate. In fact, in some stories it is quite the opposite, as what are taken to be mad ramblings or suspicions about things that probably never happened are shown to be true. Instead, Barclay's interest in memory seems to revolve around its role in connecting, for better or for worse, people and generations. Most of the stories involve characters looking back either at their own younger lives, or at the lives of their ancestors living and dead - it's the human connection that makes memories significant. In "Kajsa's Ghosts," the bond between mother and daughter is what permits Ruth to take on her ailing mother's spirits and past experiences, allowing her to see even the ghosts of people she herself never knew.

Inter-generational memory in these stories not only complicates our perception of ourselves as distinct and autonomous individuals, it also challenges our conception of time. In "Dream Catchers," the connection between generations is stronger than the wheels of time, eliminating the distinction between then and now. Trapped in a sort of waking dream about the story of her great-grandmother giving birth to a still-born son, "Brigid can watch her great-grandmother working against pain inside the bedroom and can follow the child who was her grandmother outside the house, without even moving to the window .... Brigid wants to pick up that trembling girl, sit her on her own knee in the rocking chair, far away from the room of pain." Delbert's belief in "Summer Plague" that "the longer he lives the closer he comes to that one perfect moment of his thirteenth summer when he believed in his own immortality" is another example of the fluidity of time, as is the opening line to "Hoodwinked," in which Rhea laments her separation from Digger: "It didn't start the morning he told her he never wanted to see her again and threw her out of his house any more than it ends this day of his funeral. It just seems that way."

In several of the stories, time is also shown to be a tyrant as events of the past return to haunt the present. Paula's partial discovery of her lineage in "Girl at the Window" doesn't bring her comfort but instead disrupts her present life, as does the revelation of a family secret in "Misfits." In "Dream Catchers," Brigid feels trapped by her great-grandmother's decree that her land should be passed on to the first daughter in each generation, a pronouncement that not only affects Brigid's present, but also her future as she wonders whether to carry on the family tradition if the baby she is carrying proves to be a girl.

If I have any quibbles with Girl at the Window, they are fairly superficial ones. In some places I found the comparisons, particularly between human characters and animals, a bit heavy-handed. I like to be surprised by a parallel or have to work to uncover it rather than being able to anticipate where it's going fairly early on. It also seemed that there was some recycling of characteristics - mothers who are obsessed with cleaning or pathologically afraid of germs, for example - and an unusual number of meals consisting of egg sandwiches and butter tarts; however it's possible that there's something thematic or historical going on here that I'm just not getting.

Overall, I found the stories in this collection thoughtful and often compelling. Especially early on, the careful construction of language and images forced me to slow down and read with the kind of attention that almost reminded me of reading Michael Ondaatje or Carol Shields. The characters were also a strong point - well-developed and recognizable. A particular appeal of fiction for me is the encounter with characters and situations that not only give me something to think about, but also paint a picture of life and the human experience that is somewhat familiar. Girl at the Window accomplishes this while introducing a range of characters and experiences, and a thoughtful exploration of the role of time and memory in both enriching and constricting human existence.