Product Description

This passionate new book gathers together for the first time many of Vanessa Gebbie’s award-winning stories. Described by Maggie Gee as ‘a prodigiously gifted new writer’, this is a natural storyteller; her narratives unfold with a deceptively light touch, exploring with compassion what it is to be human and flawed. ‘Words From a Glass Bubble’ is about coming to terms with the cards we are dealt. The stories pivot around the recognition that those who seem powerless can prove to be the strongest catalysts for change, both in themselves and in others. Vanessa Gebbie never shies away from difficult subjects, creating an intensely emotional and at times distressing world, but it is never totally dark or despairing. Sparks of the unexpected and flashes of humour light the whole collection with an indefatigable optimism. This is a writer with a boundless imagination, who breathes life into the most unlikely characters and events. Batty Annie fishes for her son’s soul in a disused railway tunnel. Tom’s grandmother flies on a circus trapeze. Spike relates to cacti better than people. Eva Duffy befriends a statuette of the Virgin Mary. Pepito pretends he is a priest and suffers the consequences. Shelly has a colonic irrigation to rid herself of the past. Billy hears stones when he shakes his head. Dodie from The General Stores falls for a man who teaches her ‘to think’, and Mikey mourns his wife through graffiti. From Ireland to Czechoslovakia to Wales to Alaska to Ibiza, from contemporary New York to a clinic in the future, this collection will take you on a journey. And Harry? He just goes fishing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #304375 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Tim Love's Literary References
...enough good pieces in enough styles for the book to be used as an anthology demonstrating how stories should be written nowadays...

Adele Geras
Terrific stuff: wide-ranging, interesting and very well-written.

Review
A strikingly fresh voice, sharp, shocking and original. (Peter James )

Customer Reviews

Sharp, smart and sad
Vanessa Gebbie has won more prizes for her short stories than you can shake an HB pencil at, and this debut collection shows off the best of them. She tackles tough themes with originality, subtlety and shows a humungous tenderness towards humanity's most vulnerable. Her language is often poetic, calling to mind Dylan Thomas or John Banville.
Really, really worth investigating if you're a fan of original literature.

Highly recommended
It's just a brilliant collection, from start to finish. It has a number of different moods that intertwine through the course of the book to create a marvellous smorgasbord of stories There are colourful epic tales, steady, mellow meditations, and shorter piquant and mordant interludes.

One of the finest collections available
I have admired Vanessa Gebbie's short stories since she first started to write fiction seriously, and it was no surprise to me when prestigious prizes and awards began to come her way. Many of the stories that won those accolades are included in this collection, and I urge anyone who enjoys good literary fiction to buy this book.
Gebbie has a gift for creating memorable, often quirky characters, and conjuring up the appropriate situation that will bring them out in a multi-layered, memorable story that conveys much more than the words on the page. Her stories can be poignant, funny, all things between but above all they are alive, as only character-based stories can be.