The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

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Summary

From the corner of a darkened room Joy Stone watches herself. As memories of the deaths of her lover and mother surface unbidden, life for Joy narrows – to negotiating each day, each encounter, each second; to finding the trick to keep living. Told with shattering clarity and wry wit, this is a Scottish classic fit for our time.

Reviews

A real achievement; its dialogue sparks and its voice is true. For Janice Galloway the trick is simply to keep writing
Scotsman

About the author

Janice Galloway

Janice Galloway's first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, now widely regarded as a Scottish contemporary classic, was published in 1990 and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel, Foreign Parts, won the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award while her third, Clara, about the tempestuous life of nineteenth-century pianist Clara Wieck Schumann, won the Saltire Award in 2002. Collaborative texts include an opera with Sally Beamish and three cross-discipline works with Anne Bevan, the Orcadian sculptor. Her 'anti-memoir', This Is Not About Me, was published by Granta in September 2008 to universal critical acclaim. She lives in Lanarkshire.

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