Vertigo

‘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 . . . With wry humour and profound sensitivity, Walsh takes what is mundane and transforms it into something otherworldly with sentences that can make your heart stop. A feat of language.’

* Kirkus *

‘Reading Vertigo has opened even wider my conceptions of what’s possible in fiction — how a book can be like a series of photographs, like cinema. These stories appear as much as they engage with narrative, saturated with a calm yet rich colour.’

-- Amina Cain

'Joanna Walsh’s haunting and unforgettable stories enact a literal vertigo by probing the spaces between things . . . Her narrator approaches the suppressed state of panic coursing beneath things that are normally tamed by our blunted perceptions of ordinary life. Vertigo is an original and breathtaking book.'

-- Chris Kraus (author of I Love Dick)

‘Think Renata Adler's Speedboat with a faster engine . . . Vertigo reads with the exhilarating speed and concentrated force of a poetry collection. Each word seems carefully weighed and prodded for sound, taste, touch . . . The stories are delicate, but they leave a strong impression, a lasting sense of detachment colliding with feeling, a heady destabilization.’

-- Steph Cha * Los Angeles Times *

‘Her stories reveal a psychological landscape lightly spooked by loneliness, jealousy and alienation.’

* The New York Times *

'Vertigo is a funny, absurd collection of stories.'

-- Maddie Crum * The Huffington Post *

‘Her writing sways between the tense and the absurd, as if it’s hovering between this world and another . . . Vertigo may redistribute the possibilities of contemporary fiction, especially if it meets with the wider audience her work demands.’

-- Jonathon Sturgeon * Flavorwire *

‘This collection makes the familiar alien, breaking down and remaking quotidian situations, and in the process turning them into gripping literature.’

* Vol. 1 Brooklyn *

‘Moments of blazing perspicacity, creativity, intelligence, and dark humour are insanely abundant in [Walsh’s] writing.’

-- Natalie Helberg * Numéro Cinq *

‘If anyone in the course of reviewing Vertigo refers to Joanna Walsh as a “woman writer” or says the book is about women, relationships, or mothering, I will send an avenging batibat to infiltrate his dreams because that would be like saying Waiting for Godot is about a bromance . . . No, this book is about how embarrassing it is to be alive, how each of us is continually barred from our self . . . Vertigo is a writer’s coup, an overthrow of everyday language . . . It feels so good to see Walsh jam open the lexicon – and with such dry wit. . . . No one else has her particular copy of the dictionary.’

-- Darcie Dennigan * The Rumpus *

‘Walsh handles the seismic events of life—a child in intensive care, a pregnancy morphing the body—with a sort of alien bluntness and mania for category that forces her language into bizarre, thrilling new shapes. A mind-blowing must-read.’

* Left Bank Books (Staff Pick) *

‘This is fiction infused with fine imagery, charged with an electric current, shockingly alive to new possibilities of rendering the mundane exquisite.’

* Roughghosts *

‘Beautifully simple and unembellished, Walsh’s writing – most captivating in its ability to unnerve – is cleverly revealing of her protagonist’s unique and sensitive personality.’

-- Claire Hazelton * The Guardian *

‘Vertigo is artful, intelligent . . . Walsh is a sublimely elegant writer.’

-- Sarah Ditum * New Statesm