V�rtigo

by Joanna Walsh

Overview

Women as mothers, daughters, wives, lovers… as observers, narrators, or actresses. Dressed like children or immersed in gray Parisian elegance, changing roles easily in country and language. Successful experts, they control whatever they care about. However, as each new story emerges of each new woman, the superficial tranquility of Vértigo breaks and drowns us in the panic that lurks in daily life, leaving us with one of contemporary literature’s best works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788416291632
Publisher:	Editorial Periferica
Publication date:	07/01/2019
Series:	Largo recorrido
Edition description:	None
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.50(d)
Language:	Spanish

About the Author

Joanna Walsh is an author and critic. She has written for The Guardian, The New Statesman, Granta, and the London Review of Books, among many others. She is the author of Hotel, Fractals, Grow a Pair and Worlds From the World’s End.

Editorial Reviews

"Walsh is an imaginative and honest writer. In her world, objects can be closer and more complex than they appear; These stories offer a convincing portrayal of inner life."—Publishers Weekly, on the English-language edition 

From the Publisher

08/10/2015
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. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2015-07-15
Less a collection of linked short stories—though it is that, too—than a cinematic montage, a collection of photographs, or a series of sketches, Walsh's book would be dreamlike if it weren't so deliciously sharp. At an oyster restaurant looking over the French sea, a women contemplates the likelihood that her husband is currently having an affair. "Where my husband is, it is not lunchtime yet," she says. "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 no, and as I am here in the oyster restaurant at lunchtime in another country, there is nothing I can do to prevent this." This is Walsh at her best, towing the line between an equation and a poem. The rest of the stories are equally precise. "Vertigo" is a snapshot of the family's holiday among ruins ("predicated on spending as little as possible"). In "In the Children's Ward," the woman waits for news from a nurse with kissing kittens printed on her apron. For the woman—for women in general, perhaps—Walsh's vision of domestic life requires an identity in constant flux. With the witty and unsettling "Young Mothers," Walsh presents motherhood as a kind of regression: "Pregnant, we already wore dresses for massive 2 year olds." In "Online," the woman finds her husband's digital affairs and tries on his lovers' personas. "What do you like for breakfast?" she asks him, not untheatrically—the difference between her and the lovers is that she already knows the answer. ("That is where the women online have the advantage," she observes.) With wry humor and profound sensitivity, Walsh (Fractals, 2013) takes what is mundane and transforms it into something otherworldly with sentences that can make your heart stop. A feat of language.

Kirkus Reviews