Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 · rating details · 614 ratings · 58 reviews

Joy Stone, a 27-year-old drama teacher, has come undone. Suffering from a deep depression, the problems of everyday living accumulate and begin to torture her, and she attributes her difficulties not to troubles at work, or to the accidental death of her illicit lover, but to herself. While painful and deeply serious, this is a novel of great warmth and energy, as Joy is f...more

Paperback, 236 pages

Published September 1st 1995 by Dalkey Archive Press (first published 1989)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Women and Mental Illness

88th out of 402 books — 910 voters

Manic depression and bi-polar illness in literature

7th out of 74 books — 77 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,085)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jan 31, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core, scottish, saddest

Confession: I can't stand looking at a crying woman.

I don’t want seeing any woman hurt. I’ve been surrounded by women in my life who at some point in their lives cried: my maternal grandmother, my mother, my sister, my wife, my daughter and even some of my officemates, my friends or even total strangers.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate them because they cry. I don’t want seeing people extremely sad that they have to shed tears. I don’t believe in happy tears. I think those tears come down becaus...more Confession: I can't stand looking at a crying woman.

I don’t want seeing any woman hurt. I’ve been surrounded by women in my life who at some point in their lives cried: my maternal grandmother, my mother, my sister, my wife, my daughter and even some of my officemates, my friends or even total strangers.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate them because they cry. I don’t want seeing people extremely sad that they have to shed tears. I don’t believe in happy tears. I think those tears come down because they are, deep inside, still sad. Let’s say they are crying because their big problem suddenly vanished: the father survived a critical operation, a lover came back after many years, a son was found alive in the earthquake rubble, etc. I think they cry because they are losing sadness. They are afraid of what they are about to face because they’ve been so used to having that sadness in their hearts.

Over a period of 3 years here in Goodreads, I have been encountering these beautiful, beautiful novels about women-characters who are extremely sad that every page where they appear has this funereal, dark, gloomy and somber atmosphere even if you are reading in a well-lighted room or under direct sunlight. You check your eyes. You ask yourself if you’re tired because you find everything around you gloomy as if there is a solar eclipse at high noon. It’s this power these authors bring to the reader. Through their fictional characters they can channel their personal grief and melancholy to their readers. They are really powerful that I found myself wallowing in sadness while reading the sentiments of these characters:

1. Joy Stones in The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway. Joy lost his husband in an accident while they were vacationing. Then she got into relationship with a married man who after few years ditched her. She now lives alone but still goes to school to teach children. She goes with the motion and the book is about her daily lives. She is suicidal in solitude, in hopelessness.

The writing is exceptional and stylish. This is my first time to see notes written on the page margins as if telling me that the character is pushed to the limit of her loneliness. It gives you the feeling that you are with Joy Stones in her claustrophobic lonely house, or world. You are there imagining yourself hearing Joy telling herself: “the trick (for me not to die) is to keep breathing.” She is really, really sad and I felt it.

2. The woman narrator in The End of the Story by Lydia Davis. She is now married but she still loves the young struggling writer that she grew up with (Paul Auster it seems). The book is about hoping to find Auster when she goes back to the town they used to live together. Also mostly about her daily activities. Imagine having a husband and you are still thinking of your old flair. You want to see him but not sure how you will feel.

3. Sasha Janssen in Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys. Ditched by her lover who still stays in the hotel but has no money to pay the rent. This was during World War II in Paris. She is so lonely I felt like going to that hotel and pay the rent so she will stop wallowing in sadness. My handsome brother liked this book and thought that this was the saddest of all the books he has ever read.

4. Lea in The End of Cheri by Colette. A Parisian elitist woman ditched by her boy toy. It is not as dark and gloomy as the first three books but the writing of Colette makes the book a very interesting read. It has that naughty-girl tone yet as it has Paris during WWII as the setting, you’d feel the unstated danger lurking in the horizon. The May-December affair is subtle and there is practically no extended and unnecessary love scene but you will feel the nature of the relationship between the young boy and the old woman.

Read any of these books if you want to find out how some women who are still in love when dumped by their men would behave and feel like. They just don’t cry a river (like that Barbra Streisand song). They can also get crazy. They can get suicidal.

And that is scary and should be a warning to all men to think twice about dumping their women. I can't imagine how these men being able to bear looking at their crying lovers and they can even say “it’s me, not you.”

Bleeech! Love is not a game that people play.
(less)

32 likes · like · see review

Sep 24, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, hoots-mon, dalkey-by-proxy, distaff, nonreviews

Brief Interviews With Hideous Readers

B.I. #12
Dublin

Q.
I want something light and airy. Reading is hard. After a tough day’s work, I don’t want to do any thinking. My occupation is so important, and I have to concentrate so hard, and exert myself so strenuously, that I simply cannot focus on a page of prose for more than ten minutes without collapsing in a twitching spasming heap on the floor when I get home, so I need extremely easy, unchallenging narratives that introduce me to some topic I can...more

27 likes · like · see review

Mar 05, 2013 Kalliope rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Kalliope by: Elizabeth

Shelves: fiction-english, britain

The Trick is to Keep Reading.

That is what I had to keep telling myself every 25 pages or so. I would have to break away and move to another book for a bit, before I could breathe in and come back, always willingly, to this Keep Breathing of a novel.

There is not too much of a plot in this book. It is the account of a young woman in shock after her lover drowned in a camping resort during holidays abroad. Instead of action what Janice Galloway offers us, brilliantly, is the inner pulsing of a depr...more

22 likes · like · see review

Jan 21, 2008 Debnance rated it 4 of 5 stars

The main character in this novel, ironically named Joy, is as deeply depressed as any character I’ve encountered. Joy has lost her mother to suicide and has broken off her long-term relationship with a boyfriend. She started an affair with a married man who unexpectedly dies as well. Reviewers say the novel is full “of great warmth and energy”, that “the wit and irony found in moments of depair prove to be Joy’s salvation.” It didn’t feel that way to me. The novel closes with Joy drinking heavil...more

4 likes · like · see review

Jan 09, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: life-is-shit, fiction, girls-girls-girls

Depression, like Karen described Heroin addicts in her review for the sadly out-of-print novel Like Being Killed, is boring, self-absorbed and narcissistic. Depressed people are generally no fun for anyone. For happy people I imagine them to be unfathomable springs of annoyance. Why can’t they just get on with their life, I believe they would say (maybe they say other things, happy people can feel free to enlighten me here). For other folks of melancholy dispositions, dealing with other depressed people is usually just as annoying, even if in the back of their minds they realize that what they dislike seeing in the other is also present in themselves.

But, depression is a key component to our cultural landscape. As Lewis Black said (in a paraphrase) during his book reading to the question of ‘how do you write’, or maybe it was ‘why do you write’. “Happy people don’t write books. There is something sick about sitting in front of a computer for hours by yourself and writing. Normal people don’t do that.” He probably had some swear words thrown in, and said it better than I remember him saying it. The key is that happy well adjusted people don’t generally find the need the purge / exploit their pathos on to the written page, or into good music or whatever other medium one wants to use here. This is probably why writers don’t fair so well on the per capita scale of leading happy, non-alcoholic lives that don’t way too often end in self-destruction. Good writers are able to not wallow in their own self-absorbed problems though, and are able to transcend themselves.

Some books though do wallow (dis)gloriously in depression. This is one such book. This book isn’t for everyone, actually not for most people. It’s a claustrophobic novel stuck in the narrator’s head as her own demons play out on her. The world outside of her head rarely intrudes, and even when it does it is only through the filter of her own pathos that the reader gets to see that exterior landscape. The narrator is totally self-absorbed in her own thoughts and problems, but there is no glorification involved, the line is never crossed that pushes the book into self-pitying melodrama, or the total whiny, ‘I just can’t live with this world because I’m so much better than it, and because I’ve been forced to live in this world with all these shallow and vapid people I’m oh so sad’. Comparing this book to David Zweig’s Swimming Inside the Sun, is telling. It’s like the two poles of how to deal with the question of self-absorbed depression in a book, one that works wonderfully and one that fails abysmally (of fails wonderfully also, if failure was the intended effect, which these days who can tell sometimes).
(less)

29 likes · like · see review

Dec 04, 2009 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars

I will come back to this after a second read. I read it in 24 hours. It has received praise for its literary qualities and I concur; don't have much to add save that the formal textual fragmentation just about works without drawing attention to itself, and is pretty minimal anyway so don't let that put you off. The thing that I will return to is my shock of recognition: here, in some way I suppose the literary or expressive does matter since the form of thinking matters to one caught in the web...more I will come back to this after a second read. I read it in 24 hours. It has received praise for its literary qualities and I concur; don't have much to add save that the formal textual fragmentation just about works without drawing attention to itself, and is pretty minimal anyway so don't let that put you off. The thing that I will return to is my shock of recognition: here, in some way I suppose the literary or expressive does matter since the form of thinking matters to one caught in the web of psychiatric classification; outer versus inner self; inward loneliness and isolation against a dumb show of intimacy and good cheer; hopelessness and hope. As I say, I'll come back.

Considered reflection:

Sometimes, if rarely, a book comes my way which cuts through judgments and settles to alter me. In a vague, so often sentimental way, literature is claimed to be some kind of moral or spiritual or prophylactic, consolation or guide; I do not find it so generally; I usually read for a certain kind of pleasure only. It’s the sort of pleasure of the text, the narrative, the word which comes from other than literature too – the philosophical, the scientific, the polemic and so on. So too, on those occasions when a book, or it may be a painting or film, ‘cuts through’, something other than insular pleasure is taking place, something is catalysed, something understood.
Janice Galloway’s first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, has rightly received critical praise. In short, its formal qualities are inseparable from its ‘content’, the latter most difficult to contextualise since its content is itself ‘about’ a lack of form, a subject and object of identity – a self and a mind – that is in breakdown, fragmentation, contradictory tension. I don’t want to spend time here on examining the literary qualities apart from having made the point that it is a major achievement to have formalised formlessness.
Instead I want to highlight three or four aspects of the novel which have done the ‘cutting through’ for me. It should be said at the outset that although the book is by a woman, about a woman and deals with ‘mental and emotional distress’ most conventionally identified as “women’s issues”, I think that while there are many rich approaches that will have been made with this focus (and including a woman’s relationship with man), it’s only a small step to see the novel as a refraction of more general human concerns. What would unite such concerns would be the word ‘communication’: how we ‘talk to’ ourselves, to others, and how in some way we are made of a compound of these two activities.
The whole issue of mental health saturates culture these days (as well as keeping doctors busy). The qualitative state of a diagnosed ‘condition’ does indeed bear more than a passing family resemblance to serious illness: the state of ‘severe depression’, for instance, is intensely physical in its debilitating pain, and is so utterly removed from everyday miseries and unhappiness that it shares nothing but the same letters in the same order. It is almost impossible to convey the inner experience even to those one loves and trusts. Yet, there is some truth too that before some qualitative singularity emerges, so many elements of a major psychiatric condition bear resemblance not only to illness but to the normal discourses and cultures of everyday life. While the quality of disintegration in Galloway’s book is very powerful in its impact, I think that we can see our own ‘healthy’ minds and the worlds we live in reflected in the structures and elements of the marginalised, denormalised, categorised other of the ‘patient’. These elements and structures are often only revealed in their skeletal form when we are given insight to crossing an edge, a safety boundary, to a state in extremis.
So expect, if you haven’t read the book already, to find yourself enjoying a conversation with a lively, sexualised, working woman (or the woman who works part time in the betting shop on a Saturday): she doesn’t stand out at all. And expect to find a mind beneath the woman in the street with the inoffensive manner and the ready smile which is in turmoil, occasional agony, ahedonic depression, and bears an acrid mix of shame and guilt (these latter ‘moral’ words are, as a matter of empirical fact, crucial to the reported experiences of many ‘patients’ but so rarely acknowledged by their professional advisors, careworkers, the medicalised ‘system, ‘them’). Indeed, expect quite a few laughs along the way. Joy, the protagonist, is an intelligent and witty guide to some of life’s aburdities, never more so than when she is interrogating some of the ‘helpers’ she meets. But these sparks of wit are from the same heavy stones that clash together to make the other disunited flashes.
Joy is a drma teacher (part time) in a secondary school. Her pupils seem to like her, some visit her in hospital; her headteacher is solicitous but off the mark, it is impossible for him to understand. Others try to love her as they can, almost intensely with food and advice. That the world is indeed filled with good people, love and friendship, communal joy, positive values is apparent throughout the novel. She is aware of it but separate. She has lovers, complicated and intense yet even here she is only partially involved, scripted, unable to connect fully and intimately. One solid solace, friend, anxiolytic is Gin – that seductive form of self-medication which unites the mad, the bad and the normals. Understated as it is, her social life on the wards of the hospital resonates with life anywhere. Perhaps here though, with life again stripped to a sort of miminalism, some hope is apparent (and hopefulness simply through the life force of the spirit of the narrator as well as specifics is evident throughout), some dim promise of relating the self that looks inwards to the self that looks out to others.
Joy is in grief and mourning for the sudden death of the love of her life. Aha then! Reactive depression or whatever. Perhaps, but only given in the terms of the text that the awful arbitrariness of Michael’s death precipitated a crisis that had already had most of its power energised. Most people grieve ‘healthily’. Joy herself wonders whether grief should be an illness. She thinks she is wasting the time of the health service, taking away care for the needy. She is so often putting others first. In one of her characteristically humorous sketches, she puts herself on trial: “The defendant is afraid of health. There is a certain power in illness she is reluctant to relinquish for the precise reason it lets folk off the hook. People do not visit the unsick.” (p.200). She feels uwnworthy, unworthwhile, unvaluable, nothing, empty, not real, not here, going through the motions. “Maybe there’s less to me than other people think.” (Offstage: Aha! that will be low self-esteem then).
She feels she is rotten. The imagery of atrophy prevalent in the spatial elements of decriptions, the shabbiness, the mushrooms sprouting in one of her homes from rot, the council estate dystopian decay, the dirt and the washing, the cleaning, smelling, untidy, unkempt, unrespectable, - all these and more suggest her interior private self. Incidentally, the imagery of decay is continuous, not continual: the disunited ‘tracks’ of her racing mind and feelings run in parallel, sometimes overlap, appear together, fade and highlight, this formalised in writing techniques.
Joy faces several doctors, all of whom have different ideas, none of whom seem to communicate with each other. She is asked the same narrow questions time after time. She is directed, cajoled, reprimanded. For me, her exposure to the monstrous Nancy, the occupational therapist, a wretched and miserable person (one whom, ironically, I should stop and think about, understand, demonstrate more than a passing concern) represents the nadir of an already abysmal mental care system. Joy is abused by the betting shop manager (who, again, is far from a specimen of mental wellbeing), and apparently used at his convenience by David, one of her pupils.
Her best friend is, literally, absent. Before she went to Canada she left a list for Joy pinned on the kitchen wall. Things to do in the evening such as listen to the radio, phone someone nice, sew. I suppose that’s what absent friends are for. Joy conemplates the list wryly. The growth of the industry wherein people write books of advice, offer amazing miracle cures, sell all sorts of superstitions and mumbo jumbo is not only a side of exploitative greed: it represents a cultural marker of the misery and desperation of the wider ‘normal’ population. Only somebody like Joy could see through it. As William James points out in his discussion of The Sick Soul as well as much suffering there is much wisdom and insight. The line that made me laugh aloud in the novel was after Joy had read a book (an annotated contents page she quotes in full) called Courage and Bereavement given to her by Doctor Two (all the Doctors she names with a number). She sees “American Publisher. I should have known from the spelling.” Then “Chapter 10 is a prayer. The author wishes me good luck…. I read the book in two and a half hours and cried all the way through.
“Like watching Bambi.”
This distrust of and contempt for sentimentality seems to me to be a sign of a very healthy scepticism, a resource for hope, and insofar as there may be a whisper of didacticism in the novel such sprinklings of the protagonist’s undiminished self, strong and stable, do suggest what is summated in the title. Sentimentality, brutal classificatory systems, sheer everyday ‘nastiness’, are to some extent kept at bay: the world out there becomes chimerical since the inward voice drives the soul.
There’s nothing to protect us from arbitrariness and the almost tragic impossibilities of communication. We know that all the distractions, the maxims, the books, the kindly attempts to get us out of ourselves, can’t reach our suffering and insubstantiality, our confusion and pervasive dreads. But perhaps if we rethink the whole summation of human miseries into one word, somehow a strength emerges. The name of that word would be Sorrow. The name of the young woman whose story we followed is Joy.

(less)

7 likes · like · see review

Aug 12, 2012 Marianne Wheelaghan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book when I first read it (in 1990) and still do. The novel is written in the first person in the form of a diary, and as such the reader feels very close to Joy, the protagonist. Joy is an ordinary person who has a breakdown. The diary is about her extraordinary struggle to cope with – and survive – her illness. Janice Galloway's descriptions of the tiny details of Joy's daily life make the writing all the more vivid. Joy survives her breakdown because she learns the trick of appre...more

like · see review

Apr 04, 2011 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked up The Trick Is To Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway, first because I was a huge Garbage fan in high school so the title stood out to me, and second because the subject matter intrigued me.

Wow, this book might linger with me for quite a while. It's told in a stream of consciousness, diary type style which was very difficult to follow. Much like The Bell Jar, this woman's head is NOT a fun place to be. The main character, ironically named Joy, is trying to cope with the recent death of...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 01, 2011 Katie Grainger rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Trick is to Keep Breathing follows the story of Joy Stone and her battle with depression after her lover dies. Her lover Micheal is a married man who dies while they are on holiday together. Joy has to deal not only with his death but the fact that it is his wife who is named as the grieving widow and she is only permitted certain personal things. Joy's depression and pain at times is difficult to read but the way this book is written is fascinating. Joy's life is played out through magazine...more

like · see review

Mar 24, 2013 Virtuella rated it 1 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book, because the central character totally annoyed me with her self pity (Ooooh, woe is me, my lover died and at the funeral people acknowledged his wife and not me! Oooh, woe is me, I am the one who is truly bereaved! Ooh, woe is me, people tell me I'm too skinny! Oooh, woe is me....), and the overt symbolism of the mouldering cottage really got up my nose. I think it is a typical case of a book that is well-regarded because of the topics it deals with, not because they are...more

like · see review

Jan 29, 2009 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I couldn't stop once I started. Joy Stone, the main character, ripped my guts out and took my heart along the way and it was indeed hard to breathe at many points in the book.
I finally figured out that the story hit me as hard as it did because it was scarily close something that happened to a good friend (no...not me!). I adore Janice Galloway and how her writing rips me to shreds but still makes me feel like I'm wrapped up in my favorite blanket. The truest description of a great book, for me,...more

like · see review

Jul 24, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 5 of 5 stars

The main character in this novel, ironically named Joy, is as deeply depressed as any character I've encountered. Joy has lost her mother to suicide and has broken off her long-term relationship with a boyfriend. She started an affair with a married man who unexpectedly dies as well. Reviewers say the novel is full "of great warmth and energy", that "the wit and irony found in moments of despair prove to be Joy's salvation." It didn't feel that way to me. The novel closes with Joy drinking heavi...more

like · see review

Jan 05, 2013 Tilly rated it 4 of 5 stars

“No matter how often I think I can't stand it anymore, I always do. There is no alternative. I don't fall, I don't foam at the mouth, faint, collapse or die. It's the same for all of us. You can't get out of the inside of your own head. Something keeps you going. Something always does.”

This book was a beautifully written and haunting account of the breakdown of a grief-filled mind. Told through flashbacks and disjointed narrative, with unconventional page layout, this is the best and most beaut...more

like · see review

Sep 23, 2010 Heidi rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

I should have paced out my "Sullen Girl" reading list a bit more because I would have enjoyed The Trick Is to Keep Breathing quite a lot if I haddn't recently read The Bell Jar.

The beauty in this book is not so much the story, but the narrator's trip through insanity. It's written in a journal-like form which can't be easy to do. Along with desperation and hysteria, we've got flashbacks, doodles, coorespondance letters and notes in the margin - a lot of which make absolutly no sense - so you fe...more

like · see review

Jan 25, 2012 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars

The prose was taught and clear, a heart-wrenching insight into a mind that is losing it's way.

1 like · like · see review

Apr 16, 2013 Keith Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Trick is to Keep Breathing is a story about a woman ensnared in severe depression. Although a tale of mental unbalance can be a little heavy-handed, as a character study, it is actually very subtle. The most effective grotesque images draw their power from the author's distance-keeping, like the character's attempt at a self-portrait that she includes in a letter to a friend, so poorly lighted and composed that it ends up looking like a "spider trying to devour a lightbulb." It's not the ide...more The Trick is to Keep Breathing is a story about a woman ensnared in severe depression. Although a tale of mental unbalance can be a little heavy-handed, as a character study, it is actually very subtle. The most effective grotesque images draw their power from the author's distance-keeping, like the character's attempt at a self-portrait that she includes in a letter to a friend, so poorly lighted and composed that it ends up looking like a "spider trying to devour a lightbulb." It's not the idea of the photograph that's haunting, but rather the unspoken implications about her self worth and self image, her inability to connect. Several times, Ms. Stone wakes up on the carpet of her room, surrounded by broken glass after a night of solitary drinking, which creates a real sense of danger and pangs of concern in the reader.

I also like the ideas in this novel. The act of writing is very significant for Stone, and her relationship with her own words changes as the book moves along. Because parts of the novel are presented as a therapy diary, her failure to cope or her self-loathing presents itself in her word choices, fixations, etc. . it's meta, dude. The reader experiences her struggle to write "love" at the end of a letter, to use the past tense when referring to her deceased lover, and because the cheesy Hallmark card insights fail to inspire Stone, she creates her own:

"Everything Worth Having Is Hard As Nails.
You Can't Make Other People Love You Into Existence."

I found the way Galloway handled the conclusion of the novel to be bold and refreshing. Her character's salvation comes not from a new relationship, a new city, new job, or some other bullshit throwaway plot device, but rather, it begins when she directs more of her energy outwards towards others in a positive way, instead of negatively inwards. She makes fruit preserves for her therapist, embellishes stories to make her friends laugh, and creates little crafts for other patients in the hospital.

I was going to give this book 4 stars, but the last quarter of the story is executed so well, with little bits of understated humor and compassion, that I couldn't find any fault with it. I love the scene where she hand washes a pile of her clothing as a sort of absolution, when she decides to "stop reading these fucking magazines" (finally!) and stands up for herself to the beyond monstrous Tony.

I normally don't go for this kind of story, but I saw the book mentioned in a number of best of lists for experimental fiction. Although, frankly, it's not very experimental, it's stylish and real, and Galloway elevated what could easily be a LifeTime TV original movie into an Oscar winner.(less)

like · see review

Jul 30, 2008 Laurie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-death, library-books

I only read this because the title jumped out at me from the list of books. Eh. Big time. I agree with the two star key for this "it was ok"

I like the narrative style at first and then I realized that it made it so all the action and characterization was very shallow and blurry. I assume that this was done with some intent, but that doesn't make it any more readable or interesting. Sorry.

Also, because of all that I feel like I missed the point or something. Was this the Bell Jar 2? I never thou...more

like · see review

Mar 31, 2012 Bebe Burnside rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: british, commentary, fiction, life, social

This is about a woman who is having a nervous breakdown and Janice Galloway brings us along for the ride. It is hard to read sometimes because it jumps around much like her mind is jumping around. The author does an excellent job of writing in a choppy, confused way that brings us into the mind of Joy. Scary, sad, funny, and hopeful. It's hard to fill all of that into one story, but she does, and it's worth the read.

like · see review

Aug 04, 2011 Sally Whitehead rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2011

I first started this book many years ago and gave up after a few pages...I think it's the sort of novel where you need to be in the "right place" to fully appreciate it. Having just finished it, I'm still uncertain. It's a very bleak read, despite the occasional dark humour. I love the title and the symbolic water and drowning imagery which reverberates throughout works wonderfully. An incredibly well written book, which captures someone on the brink of being utterly emotionally "broken" very we...more

like · see review

Aug 09, 2012 Margaret Clark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Really enjoyed this. I felt the stream of consciousness mode worked pretty well and I liked how the whole topic was pretty pertinent some 20 years later although dismally so. Strangely I didn't pick up the negativity of the ending as much as others seemed to - I felt Joy was starting to take control of her life more and emerge from the darkness. Maybe I missed something?

like · see review

Nov 20, 2012 Orla Broderick rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this many years ago. I read it many times. I loved it. The first time I read it I found the beginning a little difficult to understand, but that was because I had been skimming it rather than listening to the voice inside it. It is a book that has stayed in my mind for over a decade, although it is gone from my bookshelf at home!

like · see review

Apr 13, 2008 sab marked it as to-read

Kathryn says this so I'm going to read it! (Thanks, KB!): So-- I want to recommend to you what was one of my favorite favorite books in college. It is called "The Trick is to Keep Breathing" and it is by Janice Galloway. Now, I haven't read it since then, so I am wondering if it wouldn't have the same effect it did then. and i also wonder whether it will annoy you the way that margaret atwood annoyed you. and i'm also wondering whether the writing style will annoy you. regardless, i cannot think...more

like · see review

Dec 04, 2009 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Needing people yet being afraid of them is wearing me out. I struggle with the paradox all the time and can't resolve it. When people visit I am distraught trying to look as if I can cope. At work I never speak but I want to be spoken to. If anyone does I get anxious and stammer. I'm scared of the phone yet I want it to ring.

like · see review

Apr 18, 2012 Shelby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Kept waiting for the wit and irony that was mentioned in the synopsis to show up. Mostly it just stayed depressing until the last few pages. Also, does she never sleep with not married, age appropriate men? I found it difficult to like protagonist.

like · see review

Jul 29, 2010 Nadine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this in NZ - so pre 1992. Weirdly since I still have it on my bookshelf so I can't give it away (otherwise I would've done so by now), I've not read any others of hers. They go on my list to read today - an oversight I'm sure

like · see review

Jun 18, 2009 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite book I've ever read - I think I've read it 6 or 7 times. It's similar to The Bell Jar, but I think it's written much better and the main character is so much easier to identify with.

like · see review

Oct 05, 2011 Stewart rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this book, not just because it is great, emotional read but that it brings back very happy memories of a time less complicated. I re-read it at least once a year as I'm a sentimental old goat.

like · see review

Jan 02, 2011 Jenny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books

Wonderful. The subject matter - a woman's breakdown from inside her own thoughts - made it sometimes difficult to read lots in one go, but aside from that, highly recommended. Thoughtful, compelling, sometimes darkly funny, and perhaps worryingly understandable.

like · see review

Jan 11, 2012 Cass Blakeman rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is not an easy book to read as there is no strong narrative drive, but it is easy to put down and pick up again due to it's fragmentary sectional style chunks. The quality of the writing shines through the textual quirks and the plummet into insanity very well drawn. Call me a prude but ... the sexual promiscuity quite surprised me

like · see review

Apr 26, 2011 Mon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-am-woman-hear-me-roar

This book is good.
[where good = productive/hardworking/wouldn't say boo]
[where good = value for money]
[where good = neat, acting in a credit-worthy manner]
[where good = not putting anyone out by feeling* too much, blank, unobtrusive]

*Love/Emotion = embarrassment: Scots equation. Exceptions are when roaring drunk or watching football. Men do rather better out of this loophole.

3 likes · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 69 70 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (8)

More editions...

Genres

Psychology

12 users

Mental Health > Mental Illness

9 users

Cultural > Scotland

8 users

Novels

8 users

Contemporary

6 users

European Literature > British Literature

5 users

Literary Fiction

4 users

Modern

4 users

Female Authors

3 users

Womens

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Janice Galloway

Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955 where she worked as a teacher for ten years. Her first novel, The Trick is to keep Breathing, now widely considered to be a contemporary Scottish classic, was published in 1990. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, Scottish First Book and Aer Lingus Awards, and won the MIND/Allan Lane Book of the Year. The stage adaptation has been performe...more Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955 where she worked as a teacher for ten years. Her first novel, The Trick is to keep Breathing, now widely considered to be a contemporary Scottish classic, was published in 1990. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, Scottish First Book and Aer Lingus Awards, and won the MIND/Allan Lane Book of the Year. The stage adaptation has been performed at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, the Du Maurier Theatre, Toronto and the Royal Court in London. Her second book, Blood, shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, People's Prize and Satire Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her second novel, Foreign Parts, won the McVitie's Prize in 1994. That same year, and for all three books, she was recipient of the E M Forster Award, presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her story-collection, Where you find it, was published in 1996, followed by a series of collaborative installation texts for sculptor Anne Bevan, published by the Fruitmarket Gallery as Pipelines in 2000. Her only play, Fall, was performed in Edinburgh and Paris in spring, 1998. She was the recipient of a Creative Scotland Award in 2001.

Monster, Janice's opera by Sally Beamish, exploring the life of Mary Shelley, was world premiered by Scottish Opera in February 2002. Her third novel, Clara, based on the tempestuous life of pianist Clara Wieck Schumann, was published by Cape the same year and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Eurasia category) and the SAC Book of the Year, going on to win the Saltire Book of the Year. It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 2003. Boy book see, a small book of "pieces and poems", also appeared in 2002. In 2003, Janice recorded Clara as Scottish RNIB's first audio book.

Rosengarten, Janice's 2003 collaboration with Anne Bevan exploring obstetric implements and the history of birthing, is now part of the premanent collection of the Hunterian Museum, and is also available as a book.

In 2006, Janice won the Robert Louis Stevenson Award to write at Hotel Chevillon in Grez sur Loing, and in 2007, was the first Scottish receipient of the Jura Writer’s Retreat.

Janice has also worked as a writer in residence for four Scottish prisons and was Times Literary Supplement Research Fellow to the British Library in 1999. Her radio work for the BBC has included the two-part series Life as a Man, a major 7-part series entitled Imagined Lives, In Wordsworth's Footsteps and Chopin’s Scottish Swansong. (less)

More about Janice Galloway...

Books by Janice Galloway

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About The Trick Is to K...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from The Trick Is to Keep B...

“You would think there's a natural limit to tears: only so much the body can give at one sitting before it runs dry.” — 17 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
avg rating	preview: The Trick Is to Keep Breathing Goodreads rating: 3.87 (614 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/468488.The_Trick_Is_to_Keep_Breathing?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347422868l/468488.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/468488.The_Trick_Is_to_Keep_Breathing?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway[/url]

The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website