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120 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2014
There is an unmistakable current of brisk, melancholic foreboding that courses beneath the surface of her prose. The chill can make you shudder, the stark beauty of her terse sentences catch your breath. Atmospheric. Disconcerting. And strangely alluring. It is a rare author who manages to sustain an emotionally intense voice that is at once distinct, abstracted, and tightly restrained.--------------------
Interviewer: Silence is omnipresent in your work; it’s the dense, cohesive medium of your stories, like highly leaded glass. In your stories, pervasive quietness is often cruel, brutal. A breeding ground for violence – and creativity?Certain images reoccur in the collection - e.g. she is oddly fond of 'swamp green' as a colour of choice for clothes. Another was flowers, particularly purple orchids, mentioned in three stories - the quotes below giving a good feel for her work:
FJ I believe you can almost write without me. Once I have finished a book, it doesn’t count any more; I don’t want anything to do with it any more. A little idea occurs to me now: about ten years ago I was in Germany, near Berlin, for a few months, and there I had a good friend – a swan. His name was Erich. I called him from my window, “Erich! Erich!” And he came. We took long walks together. This swan is very important to me. There were other people around, but he knew when I would get up, and he would come out of the water to see me. One time, someone in the park asked me, “Is this your swan?” In the winter, he swam under the ice.
"My body does not dream. It is not there.
I am twenty-five. I have done what was, according to my sister, important. But when I was eight I was a poet and a writer. And no one had told me that it was important to write. Since then I have only done things that were important, according to my sister--studying, graduating, succeeding in life. In the street I look at people passing by, while I should be going to talk to someone about a job. I tell myself that every one of them perhaps is succeeding in life...
I only follow shadows, I am still young, I have sleeping pills in my pocket, so I am all set, I lack nothing, except whatever is lacking in terms of doing something important. That little bit of rope to be joined to another rope so as to do something really important in life, enough to succeed in life. So says my sister XX. Who went around saying that I killed myself. That's what I can't forgive her for. I graduated, went to my mother's last rites, unwillingly, against my wishes, without the least desire to succeed. Without the least desire. Even to suffer. Without grief. On the contrary, with an idle joy I am tempted to call happiness."