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WMS Alumnae & Friends

Alumnae News:
Our first WMS graduate, Dawn Paul (1979) has just published a novel, Still River.
Read what one reviewer has to say about her book.

Out in Print
Brian Jewell
bjewell@baywindows.com

Still River
Dawn Paul
Corvid Press

The connections, actual and potential, between three young people are at the heart of this melancholy novel. The characters are caught in the gentle eddies of the river of time, as well as the fascination of an actual river, and a love for wetlands and woodlands blinds them together. Southern New England’s Still River dominates the novel, a chattering reminder of death (a winter suicide) and life (tadpoles clogging the brooks in summer.) It’s a delicate, carefully observed tale of two families and two friendships, and the unexplored erotic undercurrents that take people by surprise, like unexpected white water leaving you exhilarated but shaken. The Brownells are a typical family with pretensions of propriety and upward mobility. The Bruleys are strange, insular and woods-wise.

David Brownell’s inability to deal with the unwelcome crush on a male schoolmate leads to the first connection between the families: Jay Bruley discovers his frozen body in the chilling waters of the Still River. Years later, an awkward friendship grows between Jay and David’s sister Eleanor, two young women who have nothing common except that they have nothing in common with anyone else, either. Inevitably, they are parted and their cool friendship lapses into cool memories. In Paul’s clear prose, even the landscape seems to take up the mourning for lost opportunities and days gone by. Although the tone is wistful, there’s something oddly life-affirming about the book; there’s a just-so quality to it that feels right. “Life’s hard but it’s good,” sighs the river, if we only take the time to listen.

Dawn Paul will read from her book at 5:00 PM on Wednesday, April 4 in the URI Women's Center on Upper College Road. Free and Open to the public.


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