Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Saturday 23 April 2022

"Where you find it" by Janice Galloway (Jonathan Cape, 1996)

Stories from BBC, Edinburgh Review, etc.

  • valentine - A woman reads the card from her husband, and at work compares valentine experiences. She's worried about offending him. Not a bad start.
  • where you find it - a women admires her boyfriend's tonguey kissing. No.
  • sonata form - the pregnant partner of a concert pianist attends the post-concern buffet. She deals with female admirers and a cynical director-general. Good.
  • a night in - 2 pages. A couple break into building site. Good.
  • test - Mhairi's alone - her boyfriend's away doing a gig. She shops for 3 Xmas presents - all she'll need. She thinks/worries that she's pregnant.
  • after the rains - After a slow start, strange things happen - the florist turns into flowers, the supermarket worker into a trolley, etc. At the end the narrator looks at her hands - "very pale and whitening still. Thinning."
  • waiting for marilyn - waiting at the hairdresser's. No.
  • hope - Hope writes poems and gives the narrator hope.
  • bisex - S/he phones their boyfriend. No answer. S/he imagines him being picked up by a boy. No.
  • peeping tom - Her partner comes home after work and dashes out again. She does Yoga. A policemen knocking, coming in to tell her that there's a peeping tom around (maybe based in her flat?!). She flirts with him. When her partner comes home he's too tired to have sex. She'd like more attention.
  • babysitting - Tommy looks after little Allan. Later we learn that they're brothers. When they go out and get chips again, the chipshop owner's suspicious. Later we learn that the father's dead body has been on the settee for days.
  • had to - a monologue by a grandfather whose punishment of a baby (for staring) increases.
  • a proper respect - I'm puzzled by the plot. A schoolgirl's pregnant. She'll need her mother's permission to have an abortion. She and her mother live (lived?) above a doctors.
  • the bridge - Newly into a relationship with serious artist Charlie, Fiona (her PoV) worries that their discussion about the importance of "Place" (and whether Art or Life matters most) is really about their future together. Is he volatile or just being an artist? OK, but no surprises.
  • tourists from the south arrive in the independent state - On holiday they wait with the Islanders for their luggage at the airport. It's 2am. An old minivan with tartan interior takes them over the Clyde to the New Independence Hotel. They struggle to get into their hotel room - the key's not working. That's it really. 5 pages.
  • he dreams of pleasing his mother - he watches his mother approach. I'm puzzled.
  • last thing - stream of consciousness, ending with a page that's blank except for the word "still" near the centre. 3 pages, the first-person woman being strangled? She thinks that staring into the eyes of the assaulter will help.
  • not flu - Rachel's jealous when Marc, her Dutch partner Peter's Dutch friend, stays for a fortnight. They seem more than friends. Peter gets feverish in the nights. She changes the sheets but feels ignored.
  • proposal - Irene and excitable Callum (22) are about to leave on holiday in his MG. They stop at his parents' for a Sunday roast. Entertaining/revealing banter. After they leave, Irene argues with Callum for 2 pages about why he hadn't told his parents that they were going to Belfast, then catch a ferry. She doesn't like how he's economical with the truth. She guesses that he's joined The Orange Lodge. He says he doesn't go on about her faults - her affair etc. He thinks marriage would help. She doesn't say yes.
  • six horses - About 3 pages long. 6 fragments - the 6th alludes to some of the earlier parts.

Vivid dialogue and lots of interiority. Quite a variety of characters, story-types and lengths. Lots about uncertain, fragile love.

Other reviews

  • Kirkus reviews
  • James Holden (It is this decision to ignore the forms and conventions which traditionally govern writing that is initially the most striking thing about Galloway’s writing. ... On the whole, though, these stories are grounded in a low-key reality. They also tend to be set during quite tight time frames)

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