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The Trick Is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway
The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
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This inventive first novel explores the widespread problem of female depression. A 27-year-old drama teacher named Joy Stone is losing her grip on the world. The problems of everyday living accumulate and begin to torture the narrator, who blames her problems not on her work or on the accidental... show more
This inventive first novel explores the widespread problem of female depression. A 27-year-old drama teacher named Joy Stone is losing her grip on the world. The problems of everyday living accumulate and begin to torture the narrator, who blames her problems not on her work or on the accidental death of her illict lover, but on herself. She reads horoscopes, plucks hairs, holds conversations inside and outside herself. A terrible memory tries to unfold but is resisted. Family and friends take on monstrous or pitiful guises; food threatens to become a major character. Clutching at the wrong things, the trick is to find those that let life go on. As things seen, things bought, and things said become obsessions, so the author conjures up the homely or horrifying world of litter in which the reader, like the heroine, lives.
First published in Scotland in 1989, “The Trick Is to Keep Breathing” won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the MIND/Allan Lane Books Award, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Scottish First Book of the Year.  
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Format: papier
ISBN: 1564780813
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Pages no: 236
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
La Mala *the mean girl*
La Mala *the mean girl* rated it
0.0 The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
*2015 Reading Challenge*: A book that came out the year you were born
Kalliope Muse speaks to me
Kalliope Muse speaks to me rated it
4.0 The Trick Is to Keep Breathing: A Novel
The Trick is to Keep Reading.That is what I had to keep telling myself every 25 pages or so. I would have to break away and move to another book for a bit, before I could breathe in and come back, always willingly, to this Keep Breathing of a novel.There is not too much of a plot in this book. I...
Bettie's Books
Bettie's Books rated it
0.0
Marked no way because I don't want to be in the position of having to give this a 1* because of lack of interest in the subject.
Books etc.
Books etc. rated it
This book scared me. It made wonder how far or how close I really am from the edge.
debnance
debnance rated it
5.0 Trick is to Keep Breathing
The main character in this novel, ironically named Joy, is as deeply depressed as any character I've encountered. Joy has lost her mother to suicide and has broken off her long-term relationship with a boyfriend. She started an affair with a married man who unexpectedly dies as well. Reviewers say t...
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