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missdaisyanna's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Perhaps this is the fault of the publishing house, but I certainly felt the cover and title of this collection misled me into thinking these would be short scary/spooky/horror stories. Insteadz they focussed solely on the mundane, which wasn't quite what I was looking for. Although, 'And After' does perfectly capture the experience of living in a rural town!
theartolater's review against another edition
5.0
As someone who has traditionally struggled with short stories, much of what exists in Vertigo seriously wowed me. The short story the collection takes its name from is a key highlight, but nearly every story in here is really richly portrayed and has a hypervisual quality to it that lends itself to some great mental images. At 120 or so pages, this is just one you should grab and read in an afternoon, as the stories are sized to move pretty fast, and there's really not a bad one in the bunch. Essential if you like short works.
kaitcat's review against another edition
5.0
this was very sad and made me anxious a little but overall very, very beautiful
juerbu's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars. Some beautifully crafted writing, but ultimately I found it too ephemeral and fleeting to have much lasting impact on me.
lonesomereader's review against another edition
5.0
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
expendablemudge's review against another edition
5.0
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.
daneekasghost's review against another edition
4.0
Not the plots of the stories, but the feeling of "off" or "not-quite-right" or ... vertigo, is what makes this collection worthwhile.
"Claustrophobia" was my favorite.
"Claustrophobia" was my favorite.
arirang's review against another edition
4.0
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 [a:Lydia Davis|27427|Lydia Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1434264975p2/27427.jpg], [a:Deborah Levy|147246|Deborah Levy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1309950288p2/147246.jpg], [a:Claire-Louise Bennett|6431820|Claire-Louise Bennett|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1443673781p2/6431820.jpg], [a:Bae Suah|7760890|Bae Suah|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1421293272p2/7760890.jpg] and [a:Diane Williams|291600|Diane Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1411499413p2/291600.jpg], all influences Walsh has acknowledged (see https://electricliterature.com/gaps-and-surfaces-an-interview-with-joanna-walsh-d3634f0a07ae 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/2015/09/22/travel-souvenirs-an-interview-with-joanna-walsh/
"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/2016/8/22/vertigo-by-joanna-walsh
https://roughghosts.com/2015/10/24/a-delicate-exposition-of-the-everyday-vertigo-by-joanna-walsh/http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/hotel-vertigo-grow-a-pair-joanna-walsh/
http://www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2015/11/24/joanna-walshs-vertigo
(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 [a:Lydia Davis|27427|Lydia Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1434264975p2/27427.jpg], [a:Deborah Levy|147246|Deborah Levy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1309950288p2/147246.jpg], [a:Claire-Louise Bennett|6431820|Claire-Louise Bennett|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1443673781p2/6431820.jpg], [a:Bae Suah|7760890|Bae Suah|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1421293272p2/7760890.jpg] and [a:Diane Williams|291600|Diane Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1411499413p2/291600.jpg], all influences Walsh has acknowledged (see https://electricliterature.com/gaps-and-surfaces-an-interview-with-joanna-walsh-d3634f0a07ae 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/2015/09/22/travel-souvenirs-an-interview-with-joanna-walsh/
"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/2016/8/22/vertigo-by-joanna-walsh
https://roughghosts.com/2015/10/24/a-delicate-exposition-of-the-everyday-vertigo-by-joanna-walsh/http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/hotel-vertigo-grow-a-pair-joanna-walsh/
http://www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2015/11/24/joanna-walshs-vertigo