Product Description

A young drama teacher in the West of Scotland suffers deep psychological problems which affect all areas of her life. She fails to find meaning in anything around her, but in her search she strips situations of their conventional values and sees them in a sharp, new light.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45765 in Books
• Published on: 1991-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Janice Galloway's The Trick Is to Keep Breathing opens with a woman watching herself from the corner of a darkened room. Immediately, Janice Galloway sweeps us inside her heroine's confused psychology. Alone in her flat, the woman (ironically named "Joy") sits quietly in the dark, nervously checking the clock, jumping at the shrill ring of the telephone. We learn through a series of flashbacks that the twin deaths of her married lover and her mother have brought her to this state of intense neurosis: "I don't feel as if I'm really here at all". Fragmented sentences and an irregular typography help to capture her deepening sense of dislocation and bewilderment.

With such a depressing subject matter at hand, it would be easy for Galloway's prose to become irritatingly introverted. With her sharp wit, however, Galloway skilfully prevents her narrative from sliding into egotism and self-pity. There is a host of minor characters to provide comic relief--the overweight, awkward health visitor; the pompous, irascible doctor; the man from the bookies who is desperate to seduce her; and the ever-mad Ros, another patient on the psychiatric ward where Joy inevitably ends up.

Galloway is writing in a long-established tradition of confessional fiction with mentally disturbed women at its centre. Like Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted, Galloway explores the complexities of the patient-doctor relationship. Where she differs is her sustained satire of the meagre attempts of doctors and psychiatrists to help their patients out of spiralling depressions. It is this sense of social critique that helped Galloway win two top awards--the American Academy EM Forster Award and the MIND/Allan Lane Book award--for this, her first novel. --Vanessa Cook

Customer Reviews

Great style, and a worryingly good read.
An excellent book that shows how fragile the human mind is, and how little it can take to push someone over the edge. If you take a little time to read it, it's easy to see a bit of oneself - those slightly "irrational" things you do for your own reasons that no-one else knows of or understands. The writing style - fluid, personal, yet coherent enough to make a good book - is a pleasure to read and a welcome break from traditional novels. The only complaint I would have is that the ending is a little twee, but luckily this doesn't detract from the main content of the book.

Whilst this book isn't hard to read, for me it is a more significant read than the lighter "Girl, Interrupted". I found "Girl, Interrupted" a little too disjointed in its storytelling, and somehow doesn't get across the feeling of personal distress that is apparent in The Trick is to Keep Breathing.

Janice Galloway never ceases to amaze with her writing.
This is a truly amazing book. I'd like to be more literate in review, but this book puts me in awe. The book is about a 27 year old woman named Joy Stone. Her illicit lover has just recently died and it sends her into a spiral of depression. Janice Galloway is one of the best authors around right now, and captures the human mind wonderfully. She has the ability to switch around perspectives, and making the reader (willing or not) venture into the character's mind. Her ability to mix dry wit with such a sad story make for a great read.

A great fearless little book
'The Trick is to Keep Breathing' is one of my favorite books. It is beautifully constructed: a gripping story, powerfully told. The prose is deceptively simple, using a variety of forms (including the typesetting itself) with elegance and poignancy. Although the subject is bereavement and loss, it is ultimately about forgiveness and recovery. And quite a journey. Very moving. Highly recommended. BTW: has also been adapted for stage and radio.