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Vertigo
Walsh’s penetrating short story collection evokes the titular feeling of dizziness. “I sense no anchorage,” the narrator says in the title story, “I will pitch forward, outward and upward.” It’s a statement true of both the writing and the women in it; all share a detached tone, as if speaking from the end of a tunnel, and what one character describes as “uncontrol,” lives lived in language more than action. This continuity of tone often makes it difficult to tell where one narrative drops off and another begins, as the stories are linked loosely together in flashes of syntax, which read like poetry and sometimes retreat into italicized, third-person meditations. In “Claustrophobia,” a woman’s relationship with food runs parallel to her relationship with her mother. In “New Year’s Day” a woman’s description of a party where “everyone knew how to keep some distance” is joined to her lover’s recounting, a moment later, of all the women he’s cheated on her with. “Online” is about a woman who discovers her husband has been online dating. Any navigational difficulties are worthwhile, as Walsh is an inventive, honest writer. In her world, objects may be closer and far more intricate than they appear; these stories offer a compelling pitch into the inner life.
120 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2015
About the author
Joanna Walsh
20 books148 followersJOANNA WALSH is a British writer. Her work has appeared in Granta Magazine, gorse journal, The Stinging Fly, and many others and has been anthologized in Dalkey's Best European Fiction 2015, Best British Short Stories 2014 and 2015, and elsewhere. Vertigo and Hotel were published internationally in 2015. Fractals, was published in the UK in 2013, and Hotel was published internationally in 2015. She writes literary and cultural criticism for The Guardian, The New Statesman, and others, is edits at 3:am Magazine, and Catapult, and created and runs the Twitter hashtag #readwomen, heralded by the New York Times as “a rallying cry for equal treatment for women writers.”
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
December 29, 2022
‘We are all trapped behind the same glass.’
One comfort of stories is that they are always defined as such by the nature of telling them. When hearing or reading them you get the impression of each person as someone being in the story you are experiencing. This is not so with life where only in key moments are we aware we are currently a role in a story to be told though even then we don’t have a page number to give us reference to where exactly in the story we are currently at to give us a sense of bearing. The story, in effect, becomes a product of memory where we piece together the details in a way worth telling. Vertigo, by Joanna Walsh and published by the absolutely amazing Dorothy Project (seriously, check this press out, literally everything is worth reading) is a beautiful and quiet collection of stories that tell their tales like a collection of memories as waves washing up onto the reader. These stories, all brief and gorgeously poetic, feel like they are searching for the a story and trying to make sense or find a bearing in the narrator’s experiences and thoughts. Much like one narrator’s description of a snake where ‘we could not see its beginning, we could not see its end,’ each story drops us into the consciousness of a woman contemplating the world around her, her place within it, and where to go from here. Deeply insightful and ponderous--exceptionally so given the brevity of each story--Walsh delivers a delightfully disorienting and abstract look at grappling with age, infidelity, parenthood, self-esteem and social interaction through stories that read almost like poetry and will perch in your mind long after you finish them.
‘I sense no anchorage. I will pitch forward, outward and upward.’
These stories are a delicious feast of tone. Walsh nimbly stitches together a barrage of events and images with sinuous introspections that amount to much more than the sum of their parts. It is a dazzling display of language that reads more like poetry than prose with its abstract qualities, short bursts and dissociated paragraphs, and winding ways of looking at an idea from all angles. There is no linear approach yet the reader is sure to be content letting each wave of ideas wash across them. It is like a mind piecing its life together and alighting on the many ideas that occur to them as relevant to the message they are hoping to uncover through their careful yet capricious introspection. These are more character than narrative insight, but nothing seems lacking as the purpose is in the searching and reaching.
More often than not the narrators are in a period of reorganizing their lives, be it while experiencing their outsider status on a trip abroad or reeling from divorce or infidelity. ‘There’s nothing like love’s dilution to keep things in proportion,’ she writes, and many of these characters are learning to accept themselves in the wake of loss of love. The opening story, for example, concerns a woman finding a dress in France and weaves a collections of self-insight into her own image and how she relates to other women, older or younger, as well as her thoughts on a failed marriage. ‘I was always too young,’ she considers, ‘but now I am too old.’ These dizzying attempts to acclimatize to their changing lives is perfectly reflected in the writing style and you find yourself taking stock of your own life while reading or at least vicariously through the narrators.
‘I folded my life in on itself, seven times. The last few folds it only beny. I was surprised it was so bulky.’
These are minds unsure of their own story and place within it, and it's reassuring to be reminded you aren’t the only one. While this might seem rather heavy in theory, Walsh has a deftness and quickness of wit that make them surprisingly funny and times or at least snarky enough to charm the story up from any drudgery. Young Mothers, for example, looks at the way a mother becomes minimized out of her own identity into one of simple ‘Connor's mum or Casey's mum but never Juliet, or Nell, or Amanda.’ It’s stark, yet with a sharp wit that satirizes rather than depresses. Or the story And After… which slowly winds its way to immersing oneself in specific memory as a college art student sitting in a coffee shop by first going through the broader impressions of time and place and slowly zooming in on the singular. It’s an adorable technique that is sure to bring your own youthful autumnal flavors of memories to dance again in your mind.
‘We sit in the ruin, each reading a book…’
In brief, this collection is utterly delightful. The prose styling hits strong by feeling so akin to poetry; this is a collection to take in slowly and let each story blossom in your mind for awhile after reading it. Much like a collection of poetry, each story benefits from several rereadings that allow you to flow with the rhythm of the story and let it engulf you instead of simply reading to see where it is heading. Brilliant and refreshing waves crashing on a beach is possibly the best image I can conjure for this novel and Dorothy Project has done well with their cover choice (of course they did, everything they do is so well thought out and wonderful). This collection is deeply ponderous and slowly seeps into your mind. Initially I was underwhelmed but after a few weeks with it I’ve found myself frequently thinking about it. Joanna Walsh is impressive and this book is lovely. Find yourself within it.
4/5
‘We too have built an edifice from which no one wants anything but escape’
One comfort of stories is that they are always defined as such by the nature of telling them. When hearing or reading them you get the impression of each person as someone being in the story you are experiencing. This is not so with life where only in key moments are we aware we are currently a role in a story to be told though even then we don’t have a page number to give us reference to where exactly in the story we are currently at to give us a sense of bearing. The story, in effect, becomes a product of memory where we piece together the details in a way worth telling. Vertigo, by Joanna Walsh and published by the absolutely amazing Dorothy Project (seriously, check this press out, literally everything is worth reading) is a beautiful and quiet collection of stories that tell their tales like a collection of memories as waves washing up onto the reader. These stories, all brief and gorgeously poetic, feel like they are searching for the a story and trying to make sense or find a bearing in the narrator’s experiences and thoughts. Much like one narrator’s description of a snake where ‘we could not see its beginning, we could not see its end,’ each story drops us into the consciousness of a woman contemplating the world around her, her place within it, and where to go from here. Deeply insightful and ponderous--exceptionally so given the brevity of each story--Walsh delivers a delightfully disorienting and abstract look at grappling with age, infidelity, parenthood, self-esteem and social interaction through stories that read almost like poetry and will perch in your mind long after you finish them.
‘I sense no anchorage. I will pitch forward, outward and upward.’
These stories are a delicious feast of tone. Walsh nimbly stitches together a barrage of events and images with sinuous introspections that amount to much more than the sum of their parts. It is a dazzling display of language that reads more like poetry than prose with its abstract qualities, short bursts and dissociated paragraphs, and winding ways of looking at an idea from all angles. There is no linear approach yet the reader is sure to be content letting each wave of ideas wash across them. It is like a mind piecing its life together and alighting on the many ideas that occur to them as relevant to the message they are hoping to uncover through their careful yet capricious introspection. These are more character than narrative insight, but nothing seems lacking as the purpose is in the searching and reaching.
More often than not the narrators are in a period of reorganizing their lives, be it while experiencing their outsider status on a trip abroad or reeling from divorce or infidelity. ‘There’s nothing like love’s dilution to keep things in proportion,’ she writes, and many of these characters are learning to accept themselves in the wake of loss of love. The opening story, for example, concerns a woman finding a dress in France and weaves a collections of self-insight into her own image and how she relates to other women, older or younger, as well as her thoughts on a failed marriage. ‘I was always too young,’ she considers, ‘but now I am too old.’ These dizzying attempts to acclimatize to their changing lives is perfectly reflected in the writing style and you find yourself taking stock of your own life while reading or at least vicariously through the narrators.
The bus stops and out get the sort of people who travel by bus between cities: students, old people--mainly women--and the middle-aged who cannot afford the train and who have never grown old enough to drive. Out we get, and away we go, the young, the old, and the failed girls.There is always this sense of being “between”, or waiting, most nearly unbearably so in the story The Children’s Ward with a woman waiting on news (what exactly?) in a tragically depressing children’s ward with youths vomiting and bleeding all around her (Walsh can really set a tone!). The second story, Vagues, has a woman on a rather awful date with a man she may or may not sleep with while she is constantly aware her husband is heading on a business trip to a city where there is a woman he knows that he may or may not sleep with. The waiting and uneasy uncertainty, coupled with the long questions on how the restaurant operates when oyster harvesting season is incongruous with the busy seasons (which is a pretty great metaphor for life, really), that makes this story so compelling that nothing really needs to actually happen.
I have taken the precaution of being here in the oyster restaurant with this man who may wish to sleep with me. As my husband knows that I know he is unlikely to tell me the truth about the woman with whom he will or will not have slept, so that, even if he tells me the truth, I will be unable to recognize whether or not he is being truthful, he must believe that if he sleeps with the woman, he will sleep with her entirely for his own pleasure. I, if I sleep with the man who is sitting opposite me at the restaurant, though I will not lie about whether I have slept with this man or not, will be unable to tell my husband anything he will accept as truthful, so must also, by consequence, make sure that if I sleep with this man, it must be entirely for my own pleasure too.This passage is very indicative of the circuitous self-reflections that make up much of the work. It flows slow and steady like a river over many bends and curves, as if the mind is currently convincing itself of its own current and rationalizing along the way. The frequent jumps in topics and insights also seems like the narrator trying to push out thoughts and having them interject themselves uncontrollably, which is rather effective through Walsh’s fine execution.
‘I folded my life in on itself, seven times. The last few folds it only beny. I was surprised it was so bulky.’
These are minds unsure of their own story and place within it, and it's reassuring to be reminded you aren’t the only one. While this might seem rather heavy in theory, Walsh has a deftness and quickness of wit that make them surprisingly funny and times or at least snarky enough to charm the story up from any drudgery. Young Mothers, for example, looks at the way a mother becomes minimized out of her own identity into one of simple ‘Connor's mum or Casey's mum but never Juliet, or Nell, or Amanda.’ It’s stark, yet with a sharp wit that satirizes rather than depresses. Or the story And After… which slowly winds its way to immersing oneself in specific memory as a college art student sitting in a coffee shop by first going through the broader impressions of time and place and slowly zooming in on the singular. It’s an adorable technique that is sure to bring your own youthful autumnal flavors of memories to dance again in your mind.
‘We sit in the ruin, each reading a book…’
In brief, this collection is utterly delightful. The prose styling hits strong by feeling so akin to poetry; this is a collection to take in slowly and let each story blossom in your mind for awhile after reading it. Much like a collection of poetry, each story benefits from several rereadings that allow you to flow with the rhythm of the story and let it engulf you instead of simply reading to see where it is heading. Brilliant and refreshing waves crashing on a beach is possibly the best image I can conjure for this novel and Dorothy Project has done well with their cover choice (of course they did, everything they do is so well thought out and wonderful). This collection is deeply ponderous and slowly seeps into your mind. Initially I was underwhelmed but after a few weeks with it I’ve found myself frequently thinking about it. Joanna Walsh is impressive and this book is lovely. Find yourself within it.
4/5
‘We too have built an edifice from which no one wants anything but escape’
March 11, 2016
If I could give half stars this book would get a 3.5 from me.
Joanna Walsh' writing is beautiful and I mean beautiful. I think some of us fling this term around perhaps too often. I read a lot of books that I enjoy, lots that are well written but there is a difference between well written and beautiful writing. Of course in this circumstance beautiful writing is what holds a book like this together. Without a plot, given that it is a collection of short stories, all of which are more contemplative than 'action-packed' the writing is far easier to scrutinise. It holds up though. Walsh uses imagery in the most delightful way and I found myself in love with her sentences as I was reading. On the other hand, however, I was never compelled to pick it up. It was a short collection but I read it slowly. The stories were too close to be read one after another without getting tedious so I kept setting it down after each story. I enjoyed each story, I truly did, although some more than others, but I was rarely thinking about the collection in the back of my mind when it wasn't in my hands, wanting more. For this reason I had to knock the star rating down for me. Someone else, however, might be unable to part with these words as I was. The themes it deals with including ageing, family, relationships and our perceptions/pretences were handled well but they perhaps were just not the themes for me at this time.
Joanna Walsh' writing is beautiful and I mean beautiful. I think some of us fling this term around perhaps too often. I read a lot of books that I enjoy, lots that are well written but there is a difference between well written and beautiful writing. Of course in this circumstance beautiful writing is what holds a book like this together. Without a plot, given that it is a collection of short stories, all of which are more contemplative than 'action-packed' the writing is far easier to scrutinise. It holds up though. Walsh uses imagery in the most delightful way and I found myself in love with her sentences as I was reading. On the other hand, however, I was never compelled to pick it up. It was a short collection but I read it slowly. The stories were too close to be read one after another without getting tedious so I kept setting it down after each story. I enjoyed each story, I truly did, although some more than others, but I was rarely thinking about the collection in the back of my mind when it wasn't in my hands, wanting more. For this reason I had to knock the star rating down for me. Someone else, however, might be unable to part with these words as I was. The themes it deals with including ageing, family, relationships and our perceptions/pretences were handled well but they perhaps were just not the themes for me at this time.
January 30, 2023
On the beach, sometimes you choose to pay attention to the children, and feel worthy, and sometimes you choose to read a book, and feel interested, or engaged, or intelligent, or whatever, but, whichever you are doing, I know you will be having fun because you do not worry the children might be neglected. You never have to make the choice to neglect the children. For you to read your book is not to neglect the children because you know that if you do not pay attention to the children I will. I have the choice to pay attention to the children, which I may or may not find - but must give the pretence of finding - fun, or else the whole concept of fun, and the holiday itself, tips over. Or I have a choice to read a book. But I know if I do not play with the children, you will not play with them not unless you really find it fun. My choice to read my book necessarily involves the worry of the possibility of neglecting the children. While you read your book with the attention your lack of worry affords, information enters your brain, making you more interested, or interesting, engaged or engaging, and intelligent, and so you become less like me, who, not lacking the worry of neglecting the children, does not become any of these. I can no longer see, from across the bay, which of those two things you have chosen to do. And this is why I swam the estuary.
(from Drowning, narrated by a woman on a beach holiday with her family, mentally addressing her husband)
Joanna Walsh's Vertigo is a book I've been meaning to get to for some time. Oddly un-garlanded on release - and indeed first published in the US despite Walsh being British - it has received many favourable reviews (some links below) and her profile has risen such that newer authors - particularly female writers of short stories - are already being labelled as the next Joanna Walsh.
[Indeed, as an aside, I could understand the comments of one reviewer on GR that "I'd probably have loved this if I'd read it a couple years ago. (In fairness, it was written a couple years ago." as the style is one that seems to have become more widely adopted]
This is a collection of short stories - many just 4-5 pages, the longest 16 - with a female first-person narrator (in one sense the same character in each, or at least variations on the same), with precisely honed, wry writing, full of wit. And while occasionally patchy (actually the title story Vertigo was one of my least favourite), overall it justifies its reputation.
If pushed I would describe it as a combination of Lydia Davis, Deborah Levy, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bae Suah and Diane Williams, all influences Walsh has acknowledged (see https://electricliterature.com/gaps-a... for a longer list).
Many of the stories feature the characters away from the home - in hotels, hospitals, visiting family - Walsh herself observes:
Lots of the Vertigo stories are holiday or travel stories, stories about places where we’re forced to confront our own oddness, especially our oddness in groups, and particularly families whose members, travelling, have no recourse to the support structures of external relationships they have at home. I’m also concerned with how strange words are, and how difficult it is to get them to visit reality for any length of time before they peel off, start obeying their own rules. I find all writing strange or estranging.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"Vagues" (from the French word for waves) has the narrator in a seaside oyster restaurant with a potential lover, pondering on her husband's possible infidelity:
In another country my husband may be sleeping with another woman. He may have decided, having the option, being in the same city as her, finally to sleep with the woman with whom I know he has considered sleeping, although he has not slept with her up to now. Where my husband is, it is not lunchtime yet. If my husband sleeps with the woman he will do so in the evening. As he has not yet done so, as he has not yet even begun to travel to the city where she lives, to which he is obliged to travel for work whether he sleeps with her or not, and as I am here in the oyster restaurant at lunchtime in another country, there is nothing I can do to prevent this.
[...]
As I know my husband is unlikely to tell the truth about whether he sleeps with the woman or not – though he may choose either to tell me that he has, when he has not, or that he has not, when he has – I have taken the precaution of being here in the oyster restaurant with this man who may wish to sleep with me. As my husband knows that I know he is unlikely to tell me the truth about the woman with whom he will or will not have slept, so that, even if he tells me the truth, I will be unable to recognise whether or not he is being truthful, he must believe that if he sleeps with the woman, he will sleep with her entirely for his own pleasure. I, if I sleep with the man who is sitting opposite me at the restaurant, though I will not lie about whether I have slept with this man or not, will be unable to tell my husband anything he will accept as truthful, so must also, by consequence, make sure that, if I sleep with this man, it must be entirely for my own pleasure too.
while her male companion gets frustrated at the slow service:
Because he has chosen to sit at a table looking out at the sea, in order to see and approve the environment natural to oysters including the seaweed the rubbish the seagulls the stork the stones the mother and the toddler, he cannot signal to the waitress and it is because of this, or because she is insufficiently attentive, or because the oyster bar employs insufficient staff during the busy summer season, that he waitress does not arrive with his order.
[...]
He wants to punish someone for the oysters' slow pace. He wants to punish the waitress, who has not brought his order, by leaving. As he is facing the sea, he cannot signal to the waitress, so he wants to punish me by leaving. He does not leave. Because he does not leave he wants to punish someone (the waitress? me?) by failing to enjoy his lunch.
"Young Mothers" cleverly shows how new mothers are infantilised themselves. Even pregnant, we already wore dresses for massive 2 year olds. and the new social acquaintances on the first school runs are just as disorientating as for the children: n our first day at playgroup we may have been reluctant, tearful even, to be herded together by virtue of situation and approximate age.
"Online" has the narrator, herself having been caught sleeping with another man, finding her husband is now flirting with women online:
His women were young, witty and charming and they had good jobs - at least I ignored the women he had met online who were not young, witty and charming, who did not have good jobs - and so I fell more in love with my husband, reflected as he was in the words of these universally young, witty and charming women.
The subject of the narrator's thoughts in "Claustrophobia" is not her husband (in this story she is divorced) but her mother, whose houses she is visiting on a family reunion along with her brothers and their wives.
My sisters-in-law, you have come, hungry, for my father's last show and, notwithstanding, I admire each one of you. My difficulty is in admiring your mother-in-law.
[...]
My mother likes to keep things in. I prefer the feeling I have when the full fridge is relieved. I am anxious that we eat every bit (perhaps not the preserves, the condiments) before restocking. When called upon by my mother to cook for her guests (which I am called to do, after her, am I not the woman here) I am anxious to redistribute - especially - food I know diners have previously rejected: leftovers, anomalous items, boiled carrots, a spoonful of hot sauce, a single tinned apricot. I do this by introducing them into stews, pâtés and other dishes. These additions are not in the original recipes and sometimes they ruin a meal, although in ways the eaters can scarcely identify.
I am well aware I spoil things, mostly for the sake of geometry.
A wonderful read - and I look forward to Walsh's forthcoming novel.
Four excellent reviews of the book including from two of my favourite bloggers:
http://lonesomereader.com/blog/2016/8...
https://roughghosts.com/2015/10/24/a-...
http://www.musicandliterature.org/rev...
(from Drowning, narrated by a woman on a beach holiday with her family, mentally addressing her husband)
Joanna Walsh's Vertigo is a book I've been meaning to get to for some time. Oddly un-garlanded on release - and indeed first published in the US despite Walsh being British - it has received many favourable reviews (some links below) and her profile has risen such that newer authors - particularly female writers of short stories - are already being labelled as the next Joanna Walsh.
[Indeed, as an aside, I could understand the comments of one reviewer on GR that "I'd probably have loved this if I'd read it a couple years ago. (In fairness, it was written a couple years ago." as the style is one that seems to have become more widely adopted]
This is a collection of short stories - many just 4-5 pages, the longest 16 - with a female first-person narrator (in one sense the same character in each, or at least variations on the same), with precisely honed, wry writing, full of wit. And while occasionally patchy (actually the title story Vertigo was one of my least favourite), overall it justifies its reputation.
If pushed I would describe it as a combination of Lydia Davis, Deborah Levy, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bae Suah and Diane Williams, all influences Walsh has acknowledged (see https://electricliterature.com/gaps-a... for a longer list).
Many of the stories feature the characters away from the home - in hotels, hospitals, visiting family - Walsh herself observes:
Lots of the Vertigo stories are holiday or travel stories, stories about places where we’re forced to confront our own oddness, especially our oddness in groups, and particularly families whose members, travelling, have no recourse to the support structures of external relationships they have at home. I’m also concerned with how strange words are, and how difficult it is to get them to visit reality for any length of time before they peel off, start obeying their own rules. I find all writing strange or estranging.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
"Vagues" (from the French word for waves) has the narrator in a seaside oyster restaurant with a potential lover, pondering on her husband's possible infidelity:
In another country my husband may be sleeping with another woman. He may have decided, having the option, being in the same city as her, finally to sleep with the woman with whom I know he has considered sleeping, although he has not slept with her up to now. Where my husband is, it is not lunchtime yet. If my husband sleeps with the woman he will do so in the evening. As he has not yet done so, as he has not yet even begun to travel to the city where she lives, to which he is obliged to travel for work whether he sleeps with her or not, and as I am here in the oyster restaurant at lunchtime in another country, there is nothing I can do to prevent this.
[...]
As I know my husband is unlikely to tell the truth about whether he sleeps with the woman or not – though he may choose either to tell me that he has, when he has not, or that he has not, when he has – I have taken the precaution of being here in the oyster restaurant with this man who may wish to sleep with me. As my husband knows that I know he is unlikely to tell me the truth about the woman with whom he will or will not have slept, so that, even if he tells me the truth, I will be unable to recognise whether or not he is being truthful, he must believe that if he sleeps with the woman, he will sleep with her entirely for his own pleasure. I, if I sleep with the man who is sitting opposite me at the restaurant, though I will not lie about whether I have slept with this man or not, will be unable to tell my husband anything he will accept as truthful, so must also, by consequence, make sure that, if I sleep with this man, it must be entirely for my own pleasure too.
while her male companion gets frustrated at the slow service:
Because he has chosen to sit at a table looking out at the sea, in order to see and approve the environment natural to oysters including the seaweed the rubbish the seagulls the stork the stones the mother and the toddler, he cannot signal to the waitress and it is because of this, or because she is insufficiently attentive, or because the oyster bar employs insufficient staff during the busy summer season, that he waitress does not arrive with his order.
[...]
He wants to punish someone for the oysters' slow pace. He wants to punish the waitress, who has not brought his order, by leaving. As he is facing the sea, he cannot signal to the waitress, so he wants to punish me by leaving. He does not leave. Because he does not leave he wants to punish someone (the waitress? me?) by failing to enjoy his lunch.
"Young Mothers" cleverly shows how new mothers are infantilised themselves. Even pregnant, we already wore dresses for massive 2 year olds. and the new social acquaintances on the first school runs are just as disorientating as for the children: n our first day at playgroup we may have been reluctant, tearful even, to be herded together by virtue of situation and approximate age.
"Online" has the narrator, herself having been caught sleeping with another man, finding her husband is now flirting with women online:
His women were young, witty and charming and they had good jobs - at least I ignored the women he had met online who were not young, witty and charming, who did not have good jobs - and so I fell more in love with my husband, reflected as he was in the words of these universally young, witty and charming women.
The subject of the narrator's thoughts in "Claustrophobia" is not her husband (in this story she is divorced) but her mother, whose houses she is visiting on a family reunion along with her brothers and their wives.
My sisters-in-law, you have come, hungry, for my father's last show and, notwithstanding, I admire each one of you. My difficulty is in admiring your mother-in-law.
[...]
My mother likes to keep things in. I prefer the feeling I have when the full fridge is relieved. I am anxious that we eat every bit (perhaps not the preserves, the condiments) before restocking. When called upon by my mother to cook for her guests (which I am called to do, after her, am I not the woman here) I am anxious to redistribute - especially - food I know diners have previously rejected: leftovers, anomalous items, boiled carrots, a spoonful of hot sauce, a single tinned apricot. I do this by introducing them into stews, pâtés and other dishes. These additions are not in the original recipes and sometimes they ruin a meal, although in ways the eaters can scarcely identify.
I am well aware I spoil things, mostly for the sake of geometry.
A wonderful read - and I look forward to Walsh's forthcoming novel.
Four excellent reviews of the book including from two of my favourite bloggers:
http://lonesomereader.com/blog/2016/8...
https://roughghosts.com/2015/10/24/a-...
http://www.musicandliterature.org/rev...
February 22, 2019
This book has been sitting patiently on the to-read shelf since before Christmas - I picked it up on the strength of a couple of positive friend reviews (thanks Neil and Paul).
I have to admit that I find short story collections very difficult to review - you can't just fall back on describing a plot, and going through each story individually feels rather thankless. I did enjoy this collection a lot - not much happens, the stories are fragmentary but linked, concentrating the inner thoughts of a woman (or possibly more than one woman) before and after a divorce, and the impressions created are often surprising and insightful.
I did notice one or two interesting stylistic quirks - in places punctuation is rather sparse and Walsh likes lists of nouns with no commas or linking words and in some cases these are repeated rather effectively.
I have to admit that I find short story collections very difficult to review - you can't just fall back on describing a plot, and going through each story individually feels rather thankless. I did enjoy this collection a lot - not much happens, the stories are fragmentary but linked, concentrating the inner thoughts of a woman (or possibly more than one woman) before and after a divorce, and the impressions created are often surprising and insightful.
I did notice one or two interesting stylistic quirks - in places punctuation is rather sparse and Walsh likes lists of nouns with no commas or linking words and in some cases these are repeated rather effectively.
May 27, 2016
New review for May is National Short Story Month! VERTIGO by Joanna Walsh http://tinyurl.com/gku3pwv
This collection is damn near perfect and every word is very, very beautiful. I am reading every Dorothy, a publishing project book I can glom onto! Dorothy, a publishing project's list should be required reading for aspiring publishers.
I'll put the full review here right this minute!
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Walsh’s penetrating short story collection evokes the titular feeling of dizziness. “I sense no anchorage,” the narrator says in the title story, “I will pitch forward, outward and upward.” It’s a statement true of both the writing and the women in it; all share a detached tone, as if speaking from the end of a tunnel, and what one character describes as “uncontrol,” lives lived in language more than action. This continuity of tone often makes it difficult to tell where one narrative drops off and another begins, as the stories are linked loosely together in flashes of syntax, which read like poetry and sometimes retreat into italicized, third-person meditations. Any navigational difficulties are worthwhile, as Walsh is an inventive, honest writer. In her world, objects may be closer and far more intricate than they appear; these stories offer a compelling pitch into the inner life.
My Review: These fourteen linked microfictions are the only way I've ever found directly inside a woman's head. I know feminists who claim women and men can't *really* understand each other--was recently snipped from the life of a proponent of this theory--but I suspect Joanna Walsh would disagree, as she is a feminist who has written the kind of récit that I just treasure when I find. It is very much needed in this polarized world. An eloquent voice breathing thoughts directly into the noösphere, allowing them their own life and retaining their unique identity because of that freedom. Probably does more for the small amount of understanding there is in the world by this simple, impossibly difficult act.
As always, I'll take you story by story using quotes and trying to catch some shadow of my feelings for each story. My online friend Bryce taught me this way of reviewing collections, so I call it "The Bryce Method" in his honor.
Fin de Collection leads with a strong series of crises: an Englishwoman in Paris, perhaps to buy a red dress in celebration of leaving her husband. As I'd expect, the decision and experience lead to, well, a good hard inventory:
It was here that I knew I could trust Walsh, that I was in good hands.
Vagues
I tagged this quote "worst date ever" and "just shoot him already". I have never, in all my life, thought so deeply about oysters while on a date. Poor woman! What a bore.
Vertigo is a return through time to family vacations of yore, a seeming moment of happiness in what was starting to feel like a doom-laden life:
But happiness is, for all we are taught to and desperately want to believe, internal and a matter of self-discipline:
Losing control of the wanderings of her mind, our narratrix returns to the single solid truth that she knows: She is not happy with her life. And her thoughts are drawn there by the lodestone of dissatisfaction.
Young Mothers loses the sense of self that we spend decades building in the simple fact of motherhood. Walsh makes the point that we're born of our children, "Connor's mum or Casey's mum but never Juliet, or Nell, or Amanda," that everything inside mum is focused on Connor or Casey. And then, being Joanna, Walsh throws in this single-sentence paragraph that makes a simple ordinary observation much more profound and not a little scary:
That had to hurt, writing that sentence with its many levels.
The Children's Ward needs no more explanation than the title and this quote:
Online boredom, guilt, ennui...how long can it take to reach a decision to terminate the non-functional life we all live with someone, somewhere in our past or present?
Claustrophobia is that hideous moment of not-belonging in a place and with a family we once knew and valued:
Gynergy overdose! Fetch this poor sufferer the energy to move, act, leave!
What comes after the realization that you don't fit? I've never known. Maybe bury yourself:
Have a vague hope that somehow something beautiful will come from poisonous sweet love.
The Big Black Snake is, I'm sorry to say, completely inscrutable to me. Whatever collective thought process Walsh wants to make a point about (I think) went sailing over my head, an arrow shot at a different target.
And After... ruminates on ideal futures/pasts/alternatives in the wake of a loss or an ending. Based on tone, I'd slot this in chronological step with "The Children's Ward." Here's why:
That bleak grey view of a colorful world feels exactly like grief over losing a child.
Half the World Over a peripatetic period in the divorced woman's life, New York City to Paris, leaves her surprised at anyone's vigor and adventurous spirit:
And miles to go before I sleep....
Summer Story measures the depth of self-loathing involved in being someone's back-up and realizing you'll never have any other place to be: "Finally I saw him last night at a party and he ignored me until at last he took me aside and said he was sort of seeing someone else, and I said, s'okay and he shrugged and said, that's how it goes, and I shrugged and said that's how it goes." Many a summer has been wasted by many a person over just such a non-event that manages to swallow one's entire self-esteem.
New Year's Day you *know* ex-sex is just not a good idea, but I don't know anyone who hasn't, at some moment, done the tangle-foot tango with the previous incumbent. Why?
As we dance to the masochism tango, I can hear Tom Lehrer singing his silly parody clear as day.
Relativity captures the awful insecurity that comes from being in the so-called sandwich generation, comparing one's self to mum's expectations and falling short, and daughter's needs and falling short:
Dismal view of one's life.
Drowning a swim, actual or metaphorical, across the water: "How have I lived those times you left? In abeyance. I thought it would be freedom, without you: it is not." Is it wise to ask this sort of question mid-swim? I'm leaning towards a no on that one.
I am left now, at the end of my voyeuristic time in a woman's head, no wiser than I was before about the essential question of the possibility of men and women understanding each other. I am heartened to learn that I have a companion in cluelessness. I would encourage all of you to read this slender and superb and revealing collection. Never was that word better applied to any book: This is a collection, Joanna Walsh and her narratrix are collections, I think we're all of us collections of all we touch. Add this faultless and fearless narrative to the collection that's you.
This collection is damn near perfect and every word is very, very beautiful. I am reading every Dorothy, a publishing project book I can glom onto! Dorothy, a publishing project's list should be required reading for aspiring publishers.
I'll put the full review here right this minute!
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Walsh’s penetrating short story collection evokes the titular feeling of dizziness. “I sense no anchorage,” the narrator says in the title story, “I will pitch forward, outward and upward.” It’s a statement true of both the writing and the women in it; all share a detached tone, as if speaking from the end of a tunnel, and what one character describes as “uncontrol,” lives lived in language more than action. This continuity of tone often makes it difficult to tell where one narrative drops off and another begins, as the stories are linked loosely together in flashes of syntax, which read like poetry and sometimes retreat into italicized, third-person meditations. Any navigational difficulties are worthwhile, as Walsh is an inventive, honest writer. In her world, objects may be closer and far more intricate than they appear; these stories offer a compelling pitch into the inner life.
My Review: These fourteen linked microfictions are the only way I've ever found directly inside a woman's head. I know feminists who claim women and men can't *really* understand each other--was recently snipped from the life of a proponent of this theory--but I suspect Joanna Walsh would disagree, as she is a feminist who has written the kind of récit that I just treasure when I find. It is very much needed in this polarized world. An eloquent voice breathing thoughts directly into the noösphere, allowing them their own life and retaining their unique identity because of that freedom. Probably does more for the small amount of understanding there is in the world by this simple, impossibly difficult act.
As always, I'll take you story by story using quotes and trying to catch some shadow of my feelings for each story. My online friend Bryce taught me this way of reviewing collections, so I call it "The Bryce Method" in his honor.
Fin de Collection leads with a strong series of crises: an Englishwoman in Paris, perhaps to buy a red dress in celebration of leaving her husband. As I'd expect, the decision and experience lead to, well, a good hard inventory:
There is something about my face in the mirrors that catch it. Even at a distance it will never be right again, not even to a casual glance. Beauty: it's the upkeep that costs, that's what Balzac said, not the initial investment.
It was here that I knew I could trust Walsh, that I was in good hands.
Vagues
Theories:
*During the off-months for the visitors, which are the on-months for the oysters, are the oysters packed in ice or tinned, and shipped to Paris?
*During the off-months for the visitors, which are the on-months for the oysters, do the serving staff shuck shells?
Or
*During the off-months for the visitors, which are the on-months for the oysters, are the restaurant, and the oysters, abandoned, and the staff laid off?
I tagged this quote "worst date ever" and "just shoot him already". I have never, in all my life, thought so deeply about oysters while on a date. Poor woman! What a bore.
Vertigo is a return through time to family vacations of yore, a seeming moment of happiness in what was starting to feel like a doom-laden life:
We sit in the ruin, each reading a book, or three of us read out of four. Three different voices speak to us. We have taught the children to read again this week. Here, where there is no voice, apart from ours, they are desperate for any other. They will even sing to themselves, sometimes. The boy whistles. He makes his voice croak. He sings the same thing again, but breathing in. A bird echoes the first notes of Vivaldi.
But happiness is, for all we are taught to and desperately want to believe, internal and a matter of self-discipline:
The third person. There was no sign of this happiness on the outside, she knew. She was bored by this happiness that seemed out of place, impatient to get rid of it. The feeling was less pleasurable than she had imagined it might have been, less well-defined, and when she felt along its strings she found it was not easily traced or attached to the objects she thought it might have been attached to. Perhaps it was not attached to anything at all.
Losing control of the wanderings of her mind, our narratrix returns to the single solid truth that she knows: She is not happy with her life. And her thoughts are drawn there by the lodestone of dissatisfaction.
Young Mothers loses the sense of self that we spend decades building in the simple fact of motherhood. Walsh makes the point that we're born of our children, "Connor's mum or Casey's mum but never Juliet, or Nell, or Amanda," that everything inside mum is focused on Connor or Casey. And then, being Joanna, Walsh throws in this single-sentence paragraph that makes a simple ordinary observation much more profound and not a little scary:
Then we had to remember how to play.
That had to hurt, writing that sentence with its many levels.
The Children's Ward needs no more explanation than the title and this quote:
How long before the parts of my body realized, independently, that something was wrong and arrived, severally, at panic? Panic is a still thing. I have felt it before: each limb nerve organ coming into extreme alert unrelated to any other, ready for action, but who knows what action, as there is no action that could help here.
Online boredom, guilt, ennui...how long can it take to reach a decision to terminate the non-functional life we all live with someone, somewhere in our past or present?
Claustrophobia is that hideous moment of not-belonging in a place and with a family we once knew and valued:
There are so many of you, and you are still just the way I thought I'd grow up, with all that was enviably grown-up about you: the lace tops with modesty inserts, and the spangles as if for nights out, the stiff hair, the cardigans grown over with a fungus of secondary sexual characteristics--bristling with embroidery and drooping with labial frills.
Gynergy overdose! Fetch this poor sufferer the energy to move, act, leave!
The washing up liquid smells of sweeties. It tells me that it is ginger and peach. It smells of something we should still be eating. This seems wrong: it should smell of something after, whatever it is that comes after.
What comes after the realization that you don't fit? I've never known. Maybe bury yourself:
There is no bottom to the cake. I'm digging through the kind of soil that supports rhododendrons: it's that dark.
Have a vague hope that somehow something beautiful will come from poisonous sweet love.
The Big Black Snake is, I'm sorry to say, completely inscrutable to me. Whatever collective thought process Walsh wants to make a point about (I think) went sailing over my head, an arrow shot at a different target.
And After... ruminates on ideal futures/pasts/alternatives in the wake of a loss or an ending. Based on tone, I'd slot this in chronological step with "The Children's Ward." Here's why:
Let there be children and old people but few whose occupation is neither hope nor memory. Let there have been immigration at some point: enough to fill the convenience stores, the foreign restaurants, but let it be forgotten. Let the children be all in school, a breath held in, released at 3 o'clock across the park. Let the town's rhythm be unquestioned. Let me be single: no children, no family. Let me not fit in.
That bleak grey view of a colorful world feels exactly like grief over losing a child.
Half the World Over a peripatetic period in the divorced woman's life, New York City to Paris, leaves her surprised at anyone's vigor and adventurous spirit:
I am tired and drunk and still hungry. He is full of steak and Coca-Cola and, presumably, energy: enough energy to cross the road and walk up the steps inside the tower of the cathedral, which I have never entered.
And miles to go before I sleep....
Summer Story measures the depth of self-loathing involved in being someone's back-up and realizing you'll never have any other place to be: "Finally I saw him last night at a party and he ignored me until at last he took me aside and said he was sort of seeing someone else, and I said, s'okay and he shrugged and said, that's how it goes, and I shrugged and said that's how it goes." Many a summer has been wasted by many a person over just such a non-event that manages to swallow one's entire self-esteem.
New Year's Day you *know* ex-sex is just not a good idea, but I don't know anyone who hasn't, at some moment, done the tangle-foot tango with the previous incumbent. Why?
You made yourself small on top of me, and I held myself still while you told me about the lovers you'd had while we were together. I held myself carefully because if I showed any reaction you would stop telling me. And then I would know no more than before.
As we dance to the masochism tango, I can hear Tom Lehrer singing his silly parody clear as day.
Relativity captures the awful insecurity that comes from being in the so-called sandwich generation, comparing one's self to mum's expectations and falling short, and daughter's needs and falling short:
The bus stops and out get the sort of people who travel by bus between cities: students, old people--mainly women--and the middle-aged who cannot afford the train and who have never grown old enough to drive. Out we get, and away we go, the young, the old, and the failed girls.
Dismal view of one's life.
Drowning a swim, actual or metaphorical, across the water: "How have I lived those times you left? In abeyance. I thought it would be freedom, without you: it is not." Is it wise to ask this sort of question mid-swim? I'm leaning towards a no on that one.
Despite everything, we are good people, who can hardly live in this world that continues almost entirely at our expense. The best thing is to keep on moving arms and legs, and watch the waves, almost as though moving forward. In this way, despair turns quickly over to happiness, and back to despair again. And, if you reach the beach, walk back across it like everything is fine, toward your family who would not like to see the abyss you have just swum over.
I am left now, at the end of my voyeuristic time in a woman's head, no wiser than I was before about the essential question of the possibility of men and women understanding each other. I am heartened to learn that I have a companion in cluelessness. I would encourage all of you to read this slender and superb and revealing collection. Never was that word better applied to any book: This is a collection, Joanna Walsh and her narratrix are collections, I think we're all of us collections of all we touch. Add this faultless and fearless narrative to the collection that's you.
March 4, 2021
“We sit in the ruin, each reading a book, or three of us read out of four. Three different voices speak to us. We have taught the children to read again this week. Here, where there is no voice, apart from ours, they are desperate for any other. They will even sing to themselves, sometimes. The boy whistles. He makes his voice croak. He sings the same thing again, but breathing in. A bird echoes the first notes of Vivaldi.”Walsh's writing is smart and sophisticated but the stories felt so lifeless to me.
February 20, 2016
I requested this from the publisher for review - many thanks to And Other Stories for sending this my way!
Vertigo by Joanna Walsh is a very stark, minimalist, and raw collection of short stories, that focuses solely on women from a variety of backgrounds. These stories deal with young mothers, weight, and loss of love, among other things, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Despite being a relatively short collection, at under 150 pages, I found that I really wanted to take my time with these stories. The writing in its simplicity was reminiscent of Raymond Carver to me, not only for that but for its blank, depressive mood. There isn't a great deal of dialogue in these stories however, and there is a lot of repetition, but it is always done for effect rather than due to poor writing ability. I thought this collection was excellently written, and I am definitely excited to see what else Joanna Walsh has written.
One story in particular, Young Mothers, I'd like to highlight for the way it made me stop and think, and left me with an empty, sad feeling at its ends. I immediately wanted to go back to the beginning and read this short but poignant story, and although I couldn't really relate to the narrator in this, it did make me think about my future, and how I might interpret it at later stages of my life.
I would thoroughly recommend this collection, and it's definitely a collection I'd like to re-read at various points in my life, where I think I could have a wholly new interpretation of the stories every time. Well worth picking up, particularly if you like female-centered fiction.
Vertigo by Joanna Walsh is a very stark, minimalist, and raw collection of short stories, that focuses solely on women from a variety of backgrounds. These stories deal with young mothers, weight, and loss of love, among other things, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Despite being a relatively short collection, at under 150 pages, I found that I really wanted to take my time with these stories. The writing in its simplicity was reminiscent of Raymond Carver to me, not only for that but for its blank, depressive mood. There isn't a great deal of dialogue in these stories however, and there is a lot of repetition, but it is always done for effect rather than due to poor writing ability. I thought this collection was excellently written, and I am definitely excited to see what else Joanna Walsh has written.
One story in particular, Young Mothers, I'd like to highlight for the way it made me stop and think, and left me with an empty, sad feeling at its ends. I immediately wanted to go back to the beginning and read this short but poignant story, and although I couldn't really relate to the narrator in this, it did make me think about my future, and how I might interpret it at later stages of my life.
I would thoroughly recommend this collection, and it's definitely a collection I'd like to re-read at various points in my life, where I think I could have a wholly new interpretation of the stories every time. Well worth picking up, particularly if you like female-centered fiction.
August 30, 2017
Is this a collection of short stories about different women? Or is it a sort of novel showing different episodes from the same woman’s life? Each story is standalone, but, put next to each in this collection you almost feel at the end that you have read a novel. It’s less abstract than Pond, but similar in the way it makes you think you have read a story when what you have actually read is a series of episodes that may or may not have circled round a central story line that you almost feel you have started to understand.
What we get is a series of different pictures of women (a woman). She is mother, daughter, wife. She is potential mistress.
It is full of wry observations about life
I was always too young. And now I am too old.
Everyone was younger than me, even those who were older. Or maybe it was the other way round.
It never hurts to ask (that’s what he said to me). That’s not true. Sometimes it hurts to ask.
And it contains a fair amount of word play
Far at the other side of the waiting room, a different girl aged about three vomits onto the floor. Then a buzzer sounds until a cleaner comes with a bottle of amnesia.
Would I like a drink of water, a cup of tea, a whisky? Would I like something to eat? The mother in me offers to self-satisfy, but is never self-satisfied.
When I read that first one, I knew something had just happened but I had to go back and re-read it to spot it! But that’s probably just me.
Walsh’s writing is relatively simple and without flowery additions. But it is also slightly unnerving. Vertigo (one of the stories) is a good title for the book because it does leave you with that kind of feeling. It is a short book that can be read in one go or by reading one story at a time. I had a quiet day at work, so I read it one story at a time over the course of a day. And I’d like to read more of Walsh’s work.
What we get is a series of different pictures of women (a woman). She is mother, daughter, wife. She is potential mistress.
It is full of wry observations about life
I was always too young. And now I am too old.
Everyone was younger than me, even those who were older. Or maybe it was the other way round.
It never hurts to ask (that’s what he said to me). That’s not true. Sometimes it hurts to ask.
And it contains a fair amount of word play
Far at the other side of the waiting room, a different girl aged about three vomits onto the floor. Then a buzzer sounds until a cleaner comes with a bottle of amnesia.
Would I like a drink of water, a cup of tea, a whisky? Would I like something to eat? The mother in me offers to self-satisfy, but is never self-satisfied.
When I read that first one, I knew something had just happened but I had to go back and re-read it to spot it! But that’s probably just me.
Walsh’s writing is relatively simple and without flowery additions. But it is also slightly unnerving. Vertigo (one of the stories) is a good title for the book because it does leave you with that kind of feeling. It is a short book that can be read in one go or by reading one story at a time. I had a quiet day at work, so I read it one story at a time over the course of a day. And I’d like to read more of Walsh’s work.
August 24, 2016
Whether “Vertigo” is a book of stories or a novel is something which could be debated. Many of the sections/chapters/stories follow a woman at various stages in her life: travelling without her husband, dealing with her mother's death, attending an engagement as an esteemed professional. It might be the same character or different women. Few personal details or names are given, yet Joanna Walsh gets at the heart of her protagonist's life so that you feel immediately involved in her story. She does this through an innovative and compelling style which shifts your perspective to let you see the fully rounded truth of emotional experience. These finely-crafted vignettes give a refreshing and sometimes startling perspective on our ever-shifting identities.
Read my full review of Vertigo by Joanna Walsh on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Vertigo by Joanna Walsh on LonesomeReader
January 19, 2021
«Un amigo me aconsejó que me comprara un vestido rojo en Paris porque estoy dejando a mi marido».
🍂
Así arranca «Fin de collection», el primer relato de «Vértigo». En él vemos a una mujer de viaje en un París lluvioso muy alejado de esa idílica ciudad del amor o de la luz. Walsh consigue que entremos en la mente de esa mujer y sintamos el paso del tiempo, su desconcierto y su vértigo.
🍂
Y es que si algo caracteriza a la narrativa de Walsh es cómo nos contagia del estado de ánimo de sus personajes: el aburrimiento al son de las olas de «Vagues»; la angustia de la espera en «El pabellón infantil»; la incomunicación familiar en «La gran serpiente negra»; el desconcierto al descubrir que cada vez se parece más a su madre (una idea que me ha recordado a Ferrante) en «Claustrofobia»...
🍂
¿Mi favorito? «Madres jóvenes», un relato sobre la maternidad en el que la soledad, el cansancio y la ambivalencia ocupa todo.
🍂
Pero es difícil elegir uno. Todos tratan emociones diferentes. De ahí que nos sumerjamos en «Vértigo» en un viaje emocional de gran intensidad y belleza hasta el punto de que cada vez que terminaba un relato tenía que releerlo. No dejo el libro en la estantería sino en mi escritorio. Se que volveré a él. Y cada vez lo subrayaré más hasta convertirlo en mi #librointervenido.
🍂
«Y si llegas hasta la playa, vuelve a atravesarla caminando como si todo fuera bien, ve hacia tu familia, a la que no le gustaría ver el abismo que acabas de atravesar a nado».
🍂
#JoannaWalsh #Vértigo #NarrativaBritánica #RelatosIntimistas #EscrituraExperimental #LecturasPausadas #RelatosEspejo #MaternidadesLit #MatLit
🍂
Así arranca «Fin de collection», el primer relato de «Vértigo». En él vemos a una mujer de viaje en un París lluvioso muy alejado de esa idílica ciudad del amor o de la luz. Walsh consigue que entremos en la mente de esa mujer y sintamos el paso del tiempo, su desconcierto y su vértigo.
🍂
Y es que si algo caracteriza a la narrativa de Walsh es cómo nos contagia del estado de ánimo de sus personajes: el aburrimiento al son de las olas de «Vagues»; la angustia de la espera en «El pabellón infantil»; la incomunicación familiar en «La gran serpiente negra»; el desconcierto al descubrir que cada vez se parece más a su madre (una idea que me ha recordado a Ferrante) en «Claustrofobia»...
🍂
¿Mi favorito? «Madres jóvenes», un relato sobre la maternidad en el que la soledad, el cansancio y la ambivalencia ocupa todo.
🍂
Pero es difícil elegir uno. Todos tratan emociones diferentes. De ahí que nos sumerjamos en «Vértigo» en un viaje emocional de gran intensidad y belleza hasta el punto de que cada vez que terminaba un relato tenía que releerlo. No dejo el libro en la estantería sino en mi escritorio. Se que volveré a él. Y cada vez lo subrayaré más hasta convertirlo en mi #librointervenido.
🍂
«Y si llegas hasta la playa, vuelve a atravesarla caminando como si todo fuera bien, ve hacia tu familia, a la que no le gustaría ver el abismo que acabas de atravesar a nado».
🍂
#JoannaWalsh #Vértigo #NarrativaBritánica #RelatosIntimistas #EscrituraExperimental #LecturasPausadas #RelatosEspejo #MaternidadesLit #MatLit
March 1, 2017
I'd probably have loved this if I'd read it a couple years ago. (In fairness, it was written a couple years ago.)
Hypnotically repetitive, present tense prose is starting to lose its luster. It's so easy to fall into that voice. It's how we all sound now. Everyone is thinking "out loud," so to speak. So the tolling church-bell solemnity, even when done as well this (indeed) was, begins to sound like just another blog. It's increasingly difficult to take these poignantly trifling trifles very seriously. All this consciously being self-conscious is getting tiresome.
Hypnotically repetitive, present tense prose is starting to lose its luster. It's so easy to fall into that voice. It's how we all sound now. Everyone is thinking "out loud," so to speak. So the tolling church-bell solemnity, even when done as well this (indeed) was, begins to sound like just another blog. It's increasingly difficult to take these poignantly trifling trifles very seriously. All this consciously being self-conscious is getting tiresome.
July 27, 2018
These are intelligent interlinking stories that finely examine the ebb and flow of life's moments. The negative space that is always fluid which has the potential to create a fear of falling into a void. The sentences are layered one upon another to delve deeper into the underlying context of the point the author wishes to make.
May 12, 2017
I was not unsettled or unnerved by these stories, so it is tempting to rate them lower because they did not fulfill what was promised in the blurb and title. But what I really liked is how adeptly Walsh captures the ways people really are when they interact.
A few examples:
"He is not keen to relax. He is keen to get on. He is already late for his next stage of relaxation, for the beach, where we have an appointment to meet with some friends of his at a strict hour. He is worrying that we will be late, that they will be anxious, that they, that he, will not be able to relax. He takes out his phone to check the time. We must be on time for the deckchair, the towel."
-from Vagues, or as I refer to it, the Oyster Restaurant story
"Some women take power in a country by souveniring." - from Vertigo
"At the end of the jetty, on my side of the estuary, a band is playing. Only children are dancing. The adults stare at the band as though music is something they had forgotten. It must be dispiriting to perform like this, afternoon after afternoon. One man nods the tune to his partner. She fails to pick it up. There are stalls selling snacks, and other things, but no urgency in the queue for anything. Everyone has enough money, more than enough money for food, and no one is hungry."
-from Drowning
So basically I felt the stories showed great insight but there is something that makes them fade quickly from my mind.
A few examples:
"He is not keen to relax. He is keen to get on. He is already late for his next stage of relaxation, for the beach, where we have an appointment to meet with some friends of his at a strict hour. He is worrying that we will be late, that they will be anxious, that they, that he, will not be able to relax. He takes out his phone to check the time. We must be on time for the deckchair, the towel."
-from Vagues, or as I refer to it, the Oyster Restaurant story
"Some women take power in a country by souveniring." - from Vertigo
"At the end of the jetty, on my side of the estuary, a band is playing. Only children are dancing. The adults stare at the band as though music is something they had forgotten. It must be dispiriting to perform like this, afternoon after afternoon. One man nods the tune to his partner. She fails to pick it up. There are stalls selling snacks, and other things, but no urgency in the queue for anything. Everyone has enough money, more than enough money for food, and no one is hungry."
-from Drowning
So basically I felt the stories showed great insight but there is something that makes them fade quickly from my mind.
November 3, 2017
These feel formative -- Walsh's writing is sharp and incisive, but even in connected form her stories or fragments of experience have yet to reach a totally cohesive book-length form yet. But watch out when they do. Taken as separate stories here, there are some real gems though -- the one about taking one's children to the hospital especially. Taken as strings of playfully intelligent phrases and insights, this sparkles throughout.
January 5, 2023
From the short story “Vertigo”
“The dark leaves replay over the light, then night falls curtainwise”
“In the car park of the ruin, no other tourists, only a man loading into his car brightly colored squat plastic horses for children to ride. They are beautiful! Or not. On holiday it is so difficult to judge”
**From the short story “Young Mothers” - favorite of the collection
“Colors were bright, so our children did not lose us, so we could not lose each other, or ourselves, no matter how hard we tried” (this wow wow wow)
“Then we had to remember how to play” (also wow)
“The dark leaves replay over the light, then night falls curtainwise”
“In the car park of the ruin, no other tourists, only a man loading into his car brightly colored squat plastic horses for children to ride. They are beautiful! Or not. On holiday it is so difficult to judge”
**From the short story “Young Mothers” - favorite of the collection
“Colors were bright, so our children did not lose us, so we could not lose each other, or ourselves, no matter how hard we tried” (this wow wow wow)
“Then we had to remember how to play” (also wow)
August 31, 2020
Omg how many times can she write "see the sea" and in how many different stories. Who knows because I lost count.
Maddeningly spare and reveling in the mundane, Joanna Walsh has created one of the most difficult 100 page reads I've ever attempted. I was often jealous of the prose. More often I was shaking my head at the arrhythmic cadence of the writing, or some nonsensical paragraph (there is a passage about how she doesn't know if she needs to shave her legs because she hasn't seen them because there wasn't a mirror in the house she was in... like, I can see and feel my legs without a mirror, what is this?) or some other irksome idiosyncrasy in the writing. I think in the end, the effort couldn't justify the payoff. I will keep it around for the few passages I loved, though. I don't know. You read it and see for yourself.
Grade: C
Maddeningly spare and reveling in the mundane, Joanna Walsh has created one of the most difficult 100 page reads I've ever attempted. I was often jealous of the prose. More often I was shaking my head at the arrhythmic cadence of the writing, or some nonsensical paragraph (there is a passage about how she doesn't know if she needs to shave her legs because she hasn't seen them because there wasn't a mirror in the house she was in... like, I can see and feel my legs without a mirror, what is this?) or some other irksome idiosyncrasy in the writing. I think in the end, the effort couldn't justify the payoff. I will keep it around for the few passages I loved, though. I don't know. You read it and see for yourself.
Grade: C
January 24, 2016
Exquisitely detailed renderings of deeply interior experiences. Somehow she accomplishes this by delivering one simple descriptive observation after another - it would be unreadable if it wasn't so exact.
This is the most specific writing I've ever encountered. When I recognized an experience, the effect was jolting. Like a direct line into the raw experience of another human being, no analysis, no distance, no separation, just 'this is like this', now 'this is like this'. So precise, like measurement.
Other times I had no idea what was going on.
This is the most specific writing I've ever encountered. When I recognized an experience, the effect was jolting. Like a direct line into the raw experience of another human being, no analysis, no distance, no separation, just 'this is like this', now 'this is like this'. So precise, like measurement.
Other times I had no idea what was going on.
February 10, 2016
Related short stories that are probing yet elegant in their simplicity.
Descriptions of everyday moments that examine the seemingly banal to discover the world of ambiguous truths and connected-fragment-feelings lying beneath.
Descriptions of everyday moments that examine the seemingly banal to discover the world of ambiguous truths and connected-fragment-feelings lying beneath.
March 19, 2016
A series of 14 stories, spare haunting and quite unlike any others I have read. For a full review see: http://wp.me/p4GDHM-hC
August 6, 2020
“There was no sign of this happiness on the outside, she knew. She was bored by this happiness that seemed out of place, impatient to get rid of it. The feeling was less pleasurable than she had imagined it might have been, less well-defined, and when she felt along its strings she found it was not easily traced or attached to the objects she thought it might have been attached to. Perhaps it was not attached to anything at all.”
December 13, 2020
In precise language, and sometimes with wry humor, these are dream-like tales, cinematic montages, that, I think, are linked and feature the same characters: a woman, her husband, whom she thinks might be having an affair, her children, one of whom is ill, a dying father, a mother who preferred her when she was younger and heavier. Small stories about family, motherhood, marriage, and the mundanity of life rendered into something otherworldly, that skirts the experimental.
October 11, 2022
Mid, self-involved, ultimately boring with the odd good line.
July 10, 2021
Didn't really click with me. Had a bit the same feeling as with Fleur Jaeggy: seemed a very good fit on paper, but didn't really do it for me on paper, somewhat too fragmentary, unconnected for me.
September 23, 2016
My daughter has made her first sacrifice to fashion. She has bought a short pink skirt with lace, which does not suit her and for which there is no suitable season or occasion. It will remain unworn, but beautiful. When she wears it, it stops being beautiful. When she takes it off, there it is, beautiful again. For this, she has given up her money.
This book engaged me like no other book could one day when I was up in the middle of nowhere with a stack of books to keep my company. I was slumping hard, but once I started this collection of vignettes, I couldn't stop. The packaging itself is stunning, the book almost square, and the words inside are also beautiful. It was one of those reads where I could tell that what I was reading was beautiful and fascinating, but I also felt not completely smart enough to get all of it. Each story takes you deep into the head of a woman (sometimes different, sometimes the same as an earlier story as far as I could tell). For the most part, we get to observe small moments but overall are given powerful insight into things like love, loss, being a person, etc. Walsh's minimalism was so elegant, I could hardly handle it. I was greatly moved by a number of these stories.
Full review with two others: Outlandish Lit's Quick Reads, Quick Reviews
August 17, 2016
Maybe I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate this work, but I kept thinking, "If Tao Lin wanted to be literary instead of hip, this would be the result." Beautiful writing, yes, sure, but it came across as empty. Am currently reading her Hotel and so far am vastly preferring it.
February 14, 2016
interesting series of short stories
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