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Wish I Was Here
This fierce, funny and compassionate collection explores every facet of that most overwhelming and complicated of human love. With winning directness, Jackie Kay captures her characters' greatest joy and greatest vulnerability, exposing the moments of tenderness, of shock, of bravery and of stupidity that accompany the search for love, the discovery of love and, most of all, love's loss. "Jackie Kay's characters sing from the page" - "Daily Telegraph". "So immediately engaging that it reads as though she is speaking to you at a bus stop" - Irish Times. "Jackie Kay's new book reveals her gift for capturing a voice ...at the heart of it is a faith in stories a belief that the most desolate history can be lent coherence if you tell it right" - "Times Literary Supplement". "Kay's humour and optimism are transcendent" - "Sunday Herald".
208 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 2006
13 people are currently reading
525 people want to read
About the author
Jackie Kay
106 books436 followersBorn in Glasgow in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, Kay was adopted by a white couple, Helen and John Kay, as a baby. Brought up in Bishopbriggs, a Glasgow suburb, she has an older adopted brother, Maxwell as well as siblings by her adoptive parents.
Kay's adoptive father worked full-time for the Communist Party and stood for election as a Member of Parliament, and her adoptive mother was the secretary of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Initially harbouring ambitions to be an actress, she decided to concentrate on writing after encouragement by Alasdair Gray. She studied English at the University of Stirling and her first book of poetry, the partially autobiographical The Adoption Papers, was published in 1991, and won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award. Her other awards include the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award for Other Lovers, and the Guardian Fiction Prize for Trumpet, based on the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for the last fifty years of her life.
Kay writes extensively stage, screen, and for children. In 2010 she published Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her birth parents, a white Scottish woman, and a Nigerian man. Her birth parents met when her father was a student at Aberdeen University and her mother was a nurse. Her drama The Lamplighter is an exploration of the Atlantic slave trade. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2007 and published in poem form in 2008.
Jackie Kay became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) on 17 June 2006. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Kay lives in Manchester.
Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. THE ADOPTION PAPERS (Bloodaxe, 1991) won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. DARLING was a poetry book society choice. FIERE, her most recent collection of poems was shortlisted for the COSTA award. Her novel TRUMPET won the Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. RED DUST ROAD, (Picador) won the Scottish Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the JR ACKERLEY prize and the LONDON BOOK AWARD. She was awarded an MBE in 2006, and made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. Her book of stories WISH I WAS HERE won the Decibel British Book Award.
She also writes for children and her book RED CHERRY RED (Bloomsbury) won the CLYPE award. She has written extensively for stage and television. Her play MANCHESTER LINES produced by Manchester Library Theatre was on this year in Manchester. Her new book of short stories REALITY, REALITY was recently published by Picador. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
Kay's adoptive father worked full-time for the Communist Party and stood for election as a Member of Parliament, and her adoptive mother was the secretary of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Initially harbouring ambitions to be an actress, she decided to concentrate on writing after encouragement by Alasdair Gray. She studied English at the University of Stirling and her first book of poetry, the partially autobiographical The Adoption Papers, was published in 1991, and won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award. Her other awards include the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award for Other Lovers, and the Guardian Fiction Prize for Trumpet, based on the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for the last fifty years of her life.
Kay writes extensively stage, screen, and for children. In 2010 she published Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her birth parents, a white Scottish woman, and a Nigerian man. Her birth parents met when her father was a student at Aberdeen University and her mother was a nurse. Her drama The Lamplighter is an exploration of the Atlantic slave trade. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2007 and published in poem form in 2008.
Jackie Kay became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) on 17 June 2006. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Kay lives in Manchester.
Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. THE ADOPTION PAPERS (Bloodaxe, 1991) won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. DARLING was a poetry book society choice. FIERE, her most recent collection of poems was shortlisted for the COSTA award. Her novel TRUMPET won the Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. RED DUST ROAD, (Picador) won the Scottish Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the JR ACKERLEY prize and the LONDON BOOK AWARD. She was awarded an MBE in 2006, and made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. Her book of stories WISH I WAS HERE won the Decibel British Book Award.
She also writes for children and her book RED CHERRY RED (Bloomsbury) won the CLYPE award. She has written extensively for stage and television. Her play MANCHESTER LINES produced by Manchester Library Theatre was on this year in Manchester. Her new book of short stories REALITY, REALITY was recently published by Picador. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
July 27, 2015
This is a collection of tales told in the voice of discarded or rejected partners; lovers left behind each in some different sense. Moving on has a certain cruelty and hardness about it from this angle, so this book is a welcome antibody in the plasma we inhabit of heartless individualism that discharges memes like 'get rid of everyone in your life who drags you down'. Here are the draggers, the losers, the people you've laughed off, shrugged off, the people not worth your regret. No regrets! We shout triumphantly as we slough old skins away and emerge fresh, shiny, victors over messy, demanding emotions.
Well they aren't all quite like that - the last story, in which Kay gently (indeed, lovingly) critiques the femme-phobia of two butch gay men - is a bit of a departure, a stunning departure into a glorious landscape in fact, wherein she switches between the perspectives of both partners, but for the most part, with great tenderness and delicacy, she sings in the voices of the no-longer-loved
These voices are not all melancholy and each one is audibly unique. Our author is hydra-headed, she speaks a babel of English, a poet's tongue that has heard greedily. Here is Scotland, mainly, and women, often black or 'dark', who love women, want women, share their beds and hearts and kids and dogs and interests with women (I must make more of an effort to seek out books with lesbian romance since I often find het romance fairly uninvolving). Here is the particular pleasure of rhubarb and ginger jam. Here are careful habits and the satisfying smugness we feel in them, here are embarrassments and rash, regretted, middle of the night decisions. Here is lust and disgust and magic as painfully real as giving birth. Here is the kindly wrench of letting go and the helpless shame of clinging on. Here are all the things nobody ever dares to tell you about love.
Kay captures all this so effortlessly it makes my stomach drop. The disdainful childish accusations, the pomposity of flaunting new intellectual interests, the defiant scone of self-affirmation. Particularly hilarious (not to mention poignant)is the story 'how to get away with suicide', in which a depressed man struggles to think of a way to off himself without upsetting anyone. I can't even articulate how sensitively Kay approaches difficult topics like this. I wanted to find her and give her a hug at the end, and say thank you Jackie! Thank you for giving me this!
Oh and also, this edition has the sexiest cover I've ever seen...
Well they aren't all quite like that - the last story, in which Kay gently (indeed, lovingly) critiques the femme-phobia of two butch gay men - is a bit of a departure, a stunning departure into a glorious landscape in fact, wherein she switches between the perspectives of both partners, but for the most part, with great tenderness and delicacy, she sings in the voices of the no-longer-loved
These voices are not all melancholy and each one is audibly unique. Our author is hydra-headed, she speaks a babel of English, a poet's tongue that has heard greedily. Here is Scotland, mainly, and women, often black or 'dark', who love women, want women, share their beds and hearts and kids and dogs and interests with women (I must make more of an effort to seek out books with lesbian romance since I often find het romance fairly uninvolving). Here is the particular pleasure of rhubarb and ginger jam. Here are careful habits and the satisfying smugness we feel in them, here are embarrassments and rash, regretted, middle of the night decisions. Here is lust and disgust and magic as painfully real as giving birth. Here is the kindly wrench of letting go and the helpless shame of clinging on. Here are all the things nobody ever dares to tell you about love.
Kay captures all this so effortlessly it makes my stomach drop. The disdainful childish accusations, the pomposity of flaunting new intellectual interests, the defiant scone of self-affirmation. Particularly hilarious (not to mention poignant)is the story 'how to get away with suicide', in which a depressed man struggles to think of a way to off himself without upsetting anyone. I can't even articulate how sensitively Kay approaches difficult topics like this. I wanted to find her and give her a hug at the end, and say thank you Jackie! Thank you for giving me this!
Oh and also, this edition has the sexiest cover I've ever seen...
June 1, 2009
Did you ever start reading a book and just a few sentences in feel like you have to stop, look away, take a breath because it's so damn good? That's what reading Jackie Kay is like. I'd known of her as a poet but not as a fiction writer. God she's good. Whether she's writing about a couple on the verge of splitting after years together, with the one who's leaving constantly, annoyingly, quoting Martin Amis, or a woman who's given birth to a daughter that's a fox (but how she loves her), or a divorced man who's lost his kids and wants to end his life, but must make it look like an accident...her dialogue is spot on and her characters achingly real. Love lost, grief, ache and loneliness, love and sensuality, suffuse these stories. Want to read her novel now.
August 25, 2013
What most captivated me about this book was the humanity (humanness?) that carried every story, every sentence. You cannot judge the characters even if they are flawed, because they are human. So beautifully, a little sadly and a little happily human. The writing makes you accept them.
November 26, 2012
I read lots of this on the train to/from work and spent much of it crying. Don't be put off, however! It may be heart-wrenching at times, but it's worth it. Brilliant.
December 25, 2023
4.5 she always goes so hardddddddd i love u jackie kay. every single story hit so hard. 100% recommend
January 24, 2015
A series of short stories that revolves around ordinary lives but deep & brutal to the root issues. I loved how sad truths are expressed so beautifully. Favorite ones include 'You go when you can no longer stay', 'Blinds', 'My daughter the Fox', 'Not the Queen', 'Pruning' and 'Sonata'. Basically all the stories are unique.
Favorite quotes:
“I've started to feel very odd within my own life. It's most peculiar to feel lonely inside your own life.”
“When it rains like that, dark in the afternoon, you feel like you've been taken into the past.”
“Make sure that the very different colors go next to each other so it looks deliberate. You don't want to look as if you've just run out of colour and gone for the next nearest thing.”
“I've never seen grief like it. Grief like that, it's like an animal. She's not eating. She's not sleeping. She's whimpering. She's sluggish. She's not herself”
“Do things in your own time. Everybody should like how they choose. We never know what goes behind the blinds.”
“You noticed things. You're not sure when you start. It's only when you've noticed - noticed that you know you've noticed. Maybe between the first time when you're staring to think, Is this what I think it is? and the second time when you think, Yes, between those two times, there's a silence. A pause.”
“The sound of his sleep, the snores and sighs and small noises, is company.”
“I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Nor did I feel ambitious any more. It all seemed stupid wanting to be better than the others in the same ring, shallow, pointless.”
“They never tell you about that either. How the hardest thing a mother has to do is give her child up, let them go, watch them run.”
“She walked on and on as though if she walked far enough she might walk this thing out of her. As if by walking long enough, hard enough, she might forget.”
“You cannot penalize a man for one slip. Then she lay wondering about the word slip. When you slip, you fall, but maybe it is not such a sore fall because you have slipped.”
“In my head maybe it was a test of love, because there are things about illness which I find revolting.”
“The beautiful have so much easier a time of it than the ugly, don't you think? They get smiled at the whole time. Strangers offer them things. People notice the beautiful; the beautiful are constantly acknowledged.”
“What a thing it is to have music that plays your terrible thoughts. I imagined that one piece could drive more delicate women than myself to insanity.”
“During this period I feel as if some part of myself has been banished to another part of the world.I feel as if I cannot live my life to the full and feel everything I’m capable of feeling unless I have this love. The pleasure goes from me; the delight goes. Nothing means anything.”
“How bizarre, i think to myself, to be on a train and to actually not want to arrive anywhere? What kind of madness is that?”
Favorite quotes:
“I've started to feel very odd within my own life. It's most peculiar to feel lonely inside your own life.”
“When it rains like that, dark in the afternoon, you feel like you've been taken into the past.”
“Make sure that the very different colors go next to each other so it looks deliberate. You don't want to look as if you've just run out of colour and gone for the next nearest thing.”
“I've never seen grief like it. Grief like that, it's like an animal. She's not eating. She's not sleeping. She's whimpering. She's sluggish. She's not herself”
“Do things in your own time. Everybody should like how they choose. We never know what goes behind the blinds.”
“You noticed things. You're not sure when you start. It's only when you've noticed - noticed that you know you've noticed. Maybe between the first time when you're staring to think, Is this what I think it is? and the second time when you think, Yes, between those two times, there's a silence. A pause.”
“The sound of his sleep, the snores and sighs and small noises, is company.”
“I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Nor did I feel ambitious any more. It all seemed stupid wanting to be better than the others in the same ring, shallow, pointless.”
“They never tell you about that either. How the hardest thing a mother has to do is give her child up, let them go, watch them run.”
“She walked on and on as though if she walked far enough she might walk this thing out of her. As if by walking long enough, hard enough, she might forget.”
“You cannot penalize a man for one slip. Then she lay wondering about the word slip. When you slip, you fall, but maybe it is not such a sore fall because you have slipped.”
“In my head maybe it was a test of love, because there are things about illness which I find revolting.”
“The beautiful have so much easier a time of it than the ugly, don't you think? They get smiled at the whole time. Strangers offer them things. People notice the beautiful; the beautiful are constantly acknowledged.”
“What a thing it is to have music that plays your terrible thoughts. I imagined that one piece could drive more delicate women than myself to insanity.”
“During this period I feel as if some part of myself has been banished to another part of the world.I feel as if I cannot live my life to the full and feel everything I’m capable of feeling unless I have this love. The pleasure goes from me; the delight goes. Nothing means anything.”
“How bizarre, i think to myself, to be on a train and to actually not want to arrive anywhere? What kind of madness is that?”
May 1, 2011
Her writing is so nice and easy/accessible even though she's writing about pretty depressing stuff.
This book is all about all sorts of relationships, a lot about relationship breakdowns and all seem so apt and real but all are so very different.
Looking forward to reading more of her short stories as this is the first collection of hers that I've read.
Finished approx 20/04
This book is all about all sorts of relationships, a lot about relationship breakdowns and all seem so apt and real but all are so very different.
Looking forward to reading more of her short stories as this is the first collection of hers that I've read.
Finished approx 20/04
February 6, 2012
Very readable, beautifully written short stories - its not often I so rapidly care about the characters. I was especially concerned about the two blokes going for a hike in "The mirrored twins". "My daughter the fox" was a surprising and touching fantasy dropped in the middle.
This one a gift from Clare & Ian.
This one a gift from Clare & Ian.
January 9, 2018
An arresting collection of short stories built around the theme of loneliness - or rather, the desperate and sometimes strange things that people do to avoid being lonely. At points this book is disconcerting to read, because Jackie Kay is unsparing in her examination of despair, but it's also extremely funny. There's a kind of warmth and dry humour to Kay's writing that prevents Wish I Was Here from becoming too stark.
I'd recommend this book to any short story connoisseurs, fans of Scottish fiction, or readers looking for something different. It's highly original, a good length, and will get under your skin.
I'd recommend this book to any short story connoisseurs, fans of Scottish fiction, or readers looking for something different. It's highly original, a good length, and will get under your skin.
January 28, 2020
Love, that big old bolshie word.
Jackie Kays gorgeous informal style- reads as if you're in a light airy cafe, on a Tuesday afternoon, it's autumn, but the suns shining on the single glazed glass pane, cheeks flushed with warmth- Jackie with her good friend, recites tales of her own, tales of her friends, and you just can't help but sit and listen.
Jackie Kays gorgeous informal style- reads as if you're in a light airy cafe, on a Tuesday afternoon, it's autumn, but the suns shining on the single glazed glass pane, cheeks flushed with warmth- Jackie with her good friend, recites tales of her own, tales of her friends, and you just can't help but sit and listen.
February 5, 2023
I don't usually like short story collections because I get so involved and then it's over so quickly. This book though, was such a lovely read. Jackie Kay's writing is so light-hearted while still portraying extremely loving and intense feelings.
January 13, 2021
I loved this book!
October 7, 2016
Jackie Kay deserves the title of Literary Genius, she deserves to become a classic and to be remembered and celebrated centuries into the future for her beautiful prose. I studied Kay's Trumpet in my first semester of university and absolutely loved it, then came across Red Dust Road and Wish I Was Here in second-hand book shops and picked them up, adding them to my summer reading pile. I don't regret picking up either of these books as they are both wonderful reads. Despite the fact that I usually gear away from Scottish fiction as much of it is nationalistic and irritating, I'd recommend Kay to everyone and anyone.
Jackie Kay isn't just an author, she is a writer who can capture your soul, swallow it up and spit it out in a couple of sentences, she is a writer who can make you laugh and cry at the same time, she can break your heart and patch it back together with merely two sentences. I can't compare her with the standard classics such Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Pope or Swift, as whilst none of them are alike, her writing style is nothing of the likes that I've ever experienced before. Kay's works are absolutely amazing and are a breath of fresh air amongst much of the 21st century rubbish that is published nowadays. *cough cough* Twilight *cough cough*
Fantastic, definitely deserves 5*
Ps. Read her works. I promise you that you won't regret it unless you are a racist, homophobic idiot in which case you should probably reading something along the line of 'How to gain a few brain cells'
Pps. You really, really won't regret it.
Jackie Kay isn't just an author, she is a writer who can capture your soul, swallow it up and spit it out in a couple of sentences, she is a writer who can make you laugh and cry at the same time, she can break your heart and patch it back together with merely two sentences. I can't compare her with the standard classics such Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Pope or Swift, as whilst none of them are alike, her writing style is nothing of the likes that I've ever experienced before. Kay's works are absolutely amazing and are a breath of fresh air amongst much of the 21st century rubbish that is published nowadays. *cough cough* Twilight *cough cough*
Fantastic, definitely deserves 5*
Ps. Read her works. I promise you that you won't regret it unless you are a racist, homophobic idiot in which case you should probably reading something along the line of 'How to gain a few brain cells'
Pps. You really, really won't regret it.
May 16, 2016
Some of these were very good (I liked My Daughter the Fox, Sonata, and The Mirrored Twins especially), but I found myself getting a bit grumpy with the (non-)endings, most of which are wide open and/or too abrupt for my liking. I'll definitely check out her novels at some point though.
September 30, 2020
As always, you can hear Jackie Kay speaking these words. She is telling you how it is – right at the kitchen table. And it was not that great when she broke up with Carol Ann Duffy and the disguise is thin – we are simply agreeing to believe her alter ego – would anyone ordinary break up over whether you read Martin Amis or not, and secretly read Martin Amis when you despised him?
Many of these stories are about the distances that open up between people – between long term partners, husbands and wives, lesbian couples – they are about sudden gulfs, breakdowns or not listening. And they are about loneliness – people who are on their own. A man is separated from his ex-partner and their children; he is planning his suicide, but decides to give up smoking and drinking before he kills himself, even if it takes three weeks before he does, and vacuum cleans his home and does the washing, because it would give away too much to be found dead by his ex wife like that.
Hamish and Don are experienced hill walkers, long term lovers, complements in personality, part of each other, and then a fall on a high foggy hillside may change everything, but they are together. We are left in suspense – there is no need for neat endings because we can make them.
Many of these stories are about the distances that open up between people – between long term partners, husbands and wives, lesbian couples – they are about sudden gulfs, breakdowns or not listening. And they are about loneliness – people who are on their own. A man is separated from his ex-partner and their children; he is planning his suicide, but decides to give up smoking and drinking before he kills himself, even if it takes three weeks before he does, and vacuum cleans his home and does the washing, because it would give away too much to be found dead by his ex wife like that.
Hamish and Don are experienced hill walkers, long term lovers, complements in personality, part of each other, and then a fall on a high foggy hillside may change everything, but they are together. We are left in suspense – there is no need for neat endings because we can make them.
January 8, 2024
I so loved this book, even gthough it is a collection of short styories, which I am not usually that keen on.
However, in this case she creates a set of fantastic small slices of (usually) the break up of a relationship, or certainly a situation where the affections are not balanced between each half of a couple.
So delicately written and quite heart-rending (especially as they must reflect so many bits of her own life), they perfectly show how people try harder and harder as they feel their lover slipping away, but gthe more they try the further the other person slips - the first story has this wonderful line "I had no idea she liked Martin Amis until she starting quoting lines to me about the break-up of relationships" ... that made me wince.
The stories are all different yet all " sing in the voices of the no-longer-loved" - men as well as women. Each is perfect and I swallowed the lump in my throat.
However, in this case she creates a set of fantastic small slices of (usually) the break up of a relationship, or certainly a situation where the affections are not balanced between each half of a couple.
So delicately written and quite heart-rending (especially as they must reflect so many bits of her own life), they perfectly show how people try harder and harder as they feel their lover slipping away, but gthe more they try the further the other person slips - the first story has this wonderful line "I had no idea she liked Martin Amis until she starting quoting lines to me about the break-up of relationships" ... that made me wince.
The stories are all different yet all " sing in the voices of the no-longer-loved" - men as well as women. Each is perfect and I swallowed the lump in my throat.
June 9, 2020
Beautiful collection of short stories that peer into the souls of an array of lonely, broken human beings. Most of the stories I loved, and even those that didn’t quite intrigue me as much still stood out in their craft and in their poetry. This was the first Jackie Kay book that I could get my hands on and I cant wait to read many more!
I wanted to give five stars (ESPECIALLY since that final short story was so incredible) but having to remind myself of the odd one that just wasn’t quite for me.. overall a very strong collection though
I wanted to give five stars (ESPECIALLY since that final short story was so incredible) but having to remind myself of the odd one that just wasn’t quite for me.. overall a very strong collection though
August 27, 2023
Another great collection that always feels grounded in humanity, even when the stories have little touches of fantasy it helps to draw out the real emotions of the characters ("my daughter the fox" might be my favourite example of that so far). "Sonata" reminded me of a sapphic Brief Encounter and sadly, the ending was just as painful. I also got especially invested in the concept of a queer Scottish mountain climbing couple, and regretted it when that story ended badly too...but not without hope. And it was still all worth it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 2, 2018
Such a beautiful storyteller. Each story sits effortlessly on its own. Perfect for reading on a commute as you can get so wrapped up in the characters. I would definitely come back to this in years to come. I can’t wait to delve into her poetry and other short stories.
March 27, 2019
There were some definate highs and lows in this collection. Quite a few of them felt repetitive. Most were about middle aged long term couples ending their relationship (usually to the dismay of one partner). Good but rather depressing read.
March 15, 2020
I inhaled this collection. Jackie Kay captures the inner life of, and dynamic between, queer women so crisply and so tenderly that I had to put the book down a couple of times to breathe deeply. If you are a queer woman in, or out, of love, do yourself a favour, and read this book.
November 19, 2021
These are really beautiful stories told in simple prose that reverberate with a sense of loss, love and longing. I loved her novel Trumpet, and this is the best collection of short stories I have read for some time. I am sorry I took so long to get around to finishing them, although they were so good I needed a pause between each one.
June 16, 2019
An interesting collection of short stories about love.
January 20, 2020
I really like Jackie Kay, I love her poems and I loved Trumpet. This was the first time I read her short stories and I just got so lost in them. The way she writes about love is simply true and real.
January 10, 2021
Some very soothing stories about love !
This collections especially good at pointing out flaws in love without making them seem tragic. Lovely lovely stuff
This collections especially good at pointing out flaws in love without making them seem tragic. Lovely lovely stuff
October 4, 2022
A nice collection of short stories.
September 11, 2023
Sadly boring and disappointing
November 9, 2023
Classy writing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews