Blood

by Janice Galloway

"Blood is a virtuoso work: the writing sinewy and beautiful... the integrity of vision coruscating; the whole driven by the author's restless experimentation with form. And at least two stories, "Blood" itself and "Fearless", will certainly end up in anthologies: not Best Scottish Writers, or Best Women Writers, but quite simply, Best." - New Statesman and Society

"I remember reading a story by Janice Galloway for the first time; its urgency of voice, that certainty of expression, I wondered why I hadn't heard of her before; then discovered that she was altogether new to writing. It was some debut. She really is a fine writer." - James Kelman

"A salutary collection... a marvelous revelation. A writer of passion and virtuosity shines through." - Scotland on Sunday

"Genuinely unnerving... she is a fierce, troubling new writer." - Observer

"Galloway flecks her hard-edged realism with impressionist grace-notes, a potent mixture that confirms her... as one of Scotland's best young writers." - Sunday Telegraph

"There is ample proof in Blood of Galloway's unassailable talent. Marvellously funny and beautifully paced." - Glasgow Herald

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Scotland

178 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

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.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be a relatively solid collection, though I only caught glimpses of the narrative tension that so drew me into Galloway’s novel The Trick Is To Keep Breathing. Galloway’s prose appeals to me the most when it’s all messy mixed-up stream-of-consciousness tense-changing chaos. That’s when it feels most alive and keeps me turning the pages. Many of the stories here, while good in their own right, don’t fully fit into that category. Some are mere character sketches that, while well done, didn’t linger.

Four stories in particular stood out:

‘Blood’ – The opening title story induces a disorientation from the start that never lets up. We figure out what’s going on pretty quickly but that doesn’t mute the ongoing shock. It’s essentially a quotidian horror story—hyper-exposed and visceral in its details.

Big, red drips when she tried to open her mouth. And something else. She watched the slow trail of red on the white enamel, concentrating. Something slithered in her stomach, a slow dullness that made it difficult to straighten up again. Then a twinge in her back, a recognizable contraction.

‘Nightdriving’ – A very effective piece consisting of just four short blocks of prose that tell a story of sorts through recollections of driving at night. Galloway's prose here is pitch-perfect.

The city road is a narrow stretch with hills that rise on either side, steep like the sides of a coffin: a lining of grass like green silk and the lid open to the sky but it is a coffin all the same. The verges hang with ripped-back cars from the breaker’s yard, splitting the earth on either side, but you keep on going, over the dips and bends between the rust and heather till the last blind bend and it appears. Between the green and brown, the husks of broken cars: a v-shaped glimpse of somewhere else so far away it seems to float.

‘things he said’ – An even shorter piece than ‘Nightdriving’ but still impressive in its complexity, this one hearkened back to what I recall of the style and narrator of The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, almost feeling like an outtake from that book.

The things he said, not ready himself for how much. And when he stopped, knowing I was there, that the things he said put me past sleep, he stood up. Smoke trailing over his lip like gauze, the rims of his eyes grey.

‘A Week with Uncle Felix’ – At 48 pages this is by far the longest story in the collection and it’s a strange one, in part due to how much it differs from the rest of the collection. An 11-year-old girl named Senga travels with her maternal aunt Grace and uncle Duncan to visit her paternal uncle, Felix. Her father (known as Jock) died when she was very young and so she has little memory of him, nor does she know Felix well either, due to distancing from Jock’s family on the part of her mother following his death. The story is written in a tight third-person POV centered on Senga. She’s at that awkward preteen stage where she’s feeling like more than a kid, but is still being treated as one by her relatives. Grace and Duncan are somewhat frivolous people who may not be the most attentive caretakers of their niece. From the start an uncertain vibe emanates from Felix: is he creepy or merely reclusive and somewhat socially awkward? Is he just interested in getting to know his dead brother’s daughter or are ulterior motives at play? Galloway transforms what is an otherwise fairly mundane domestic tale into one tinged with vague menace by sustaining these questions throughout almost the entirety of the story.

It got to that in-between time of night quicker here, when it was too dark with the light not on but that horrible yellow color when it was. She put the light on anyway, showing up the stouriness of everything, ridges of it along the banister rim. It was even darker upstairs. Looking at it made her stomach feel cold. But all you had to do was refuse to look scared then nothing could touch you. And there was the switch down here as well. Stupid. Her neck prickled as she reached and put on the second switch, watching the light bleed out over the steps. Being feart like this was stupid.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to S̶e̶a̶n̶ for the tip. I really liked the first few stories, with some cruel and cutting writing. I guessed I was enjoying this more than S̶e̶a̶n̶, partly because I might be a little more enthusiastic about incompleteness as an aesthetic goal.

Then things got very uneven. There's often a surprise detail or small twist that kept my interest. But it just seemed that I had to slog through so much before the small payoff. The little playlets in particular are cluttered with miscellaneous detail that IMO added little to the main narrative. "Scenes from the Life No. 27 Living In" had six pages of the main character getting out of bed, pissing and adjusting his underwear and penis (I'm serious), drinking beer and getting back in bed, before we're rewarded with our little uncanny intrusion.

The last story, "A Week with Uncle Felix", is quite a departure from the earlier items (almost 3 times longer than the next longest piece). I think it captures a child's wonder and confusion very well, when placed in an unfamiliar environment. The little girl's misinterpretations of domestic and social situations and the classic British reserve of the characters all add to her isolation. I have to say I didn't like the abuse scene near the end. It was too spelled out for my taste; IMO just a couple details would have been more effective.

But overall an enjoyable collection, with some sharp and anxious prose, despite my complaints. I see the new Kathryn Davis just came out; Galloway would be an excellent warmup!

[Cathy Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I've read one too many sensitive middle-class novels in which sensitive people behave sensitively towards each other in their charming houses that reflect their taste and sensitive characters, so this was a blast of fresh, fierce Scottish air.
Working class and experimental, these stories are on the edge in both form and content, and the only uniform aspect is the quality, which is as high as it gets.
There's wit and charm, but also helplessness and insoluble problems.One story is more or less a literary version of Biffa Bacon from Viz, and another is the tale of an old woman's suicide. Life hurts; people bleed; and rarely do they do it with such force and impact as here. Wonderful stuff. Beautifully gritty.

[Matthew Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I have trouble reading stories this short, because my attention span doesn't allow for me to read more than one or two at a time and then I spend three weeks on a 180-page book that I could have read in a day or two. But it's good! Some stories (the title story, and a couple of others) are better than others (ie. the longest story) but overall it's definitely worth reading. Start with The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, though, if you haven't read her before.

[I · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Fearless' was the story that really stuck with me. Not just because of the characterisation but because Fearless was a real person, a known character in Saltcoats, Ayrshire where the author is from.

[mysterygif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luscious dark short fictions illuminate human anguish and threat in mundane realities. Beautiful prose featuring super sharp construction of original descriptive phrases. Most of these stories are only a few pages so possible to consume rapidly, if not to digest.

[Susan]

Short stories

[Natasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't really understand the deeper meaning of it, but I loved it.

[Courtney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't really enjoy this book at all, felt it was really confusing and hard to keep up with.

[Emmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half of the book is a 4/5 stars but the other half the tension between me and galloway dissapeared

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tales in Blood take real life and filter it through dense, sometimes fragmented prose, until it becomes… more concentrated, one might say. In the title story, for example, a girl has her tooth removed by the dentist, and her desire to stanch the bleeding comes to represent something of a wish to hold herself in, as it were. ‘Plastering the Cracks’ begins with the straightforward premise of a woman calling in workmen to repair a room, but treats its material with a twist of absurdity, as the builders move in and communicate with the woman only through notes.

The piece ’two fragments’ deals directly with the idea of ‘inflating’ reality, as it contrasts the ways in which a father lost two fingers and a grandmother one of her eyes, with the outlandish explanations given to the narrator as a child. ‘Love in a changing environment’ pushes its subject slightly out of reality in a slightly different way, as it depicts the ups and downs of a couple’s relationship being affected by the changing nature of the shop above which they live. A series of pieces called ‘Scenes from the Life’ depict various situations, such as a father’s harsh life-lesson to his son, and an elderly woman’s appointment with a health visitor, as theatrical scenes, which puts distance between reader and action in a thought-provoking way.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story of this collection has the most realistic description of a trip to the dentist since McTeague or Huysman's Against the Grain. Great story, too. This collection is marked by a compressed, and vibrant language; as well as continuous experimentation with form. The willingness to explore non-traditional approaches to the story is refreshing, and combined with the compression of language, makes this a real find. Not sure what to make of some of these pieces, but it’s a pleasurable read. I love the risk taking. Twenty-three stories here and I think something unique could be said about her technique in each one. Language predominates over character, particularly in the short-shorts.

[East Bay J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blood is a collection of short stories by Scottish writer, Janice Galloway. These stories are told from a distinctly female point of view and examine the interplay between men and women, often the effect that men have on women and specifically the effects on women of living in a male dominated society. Galloway's writing is superb. She takes chances another writer would not take or would take but fail and her peculiar strength is in conveying a wealth of emotion in a few simple words. These twenty two short tales are little rollercoaster rides; they can leave you anywhere from out of breath to outraged.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Galloway is a revelation in contemporary English-language literature, a voice in complete control of form, style, and emotion. Blood is the rare short work collection that manages to explore the form successfully, experimentally, but with a force and movement that keeps the reader deeply engaged, earning genuine, often uncomfortable but always powerful raw moments of humanity.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a completely different book for me to read as its all short stories. all the stories are very harsh, some rather sad some grim. it was interesting to read something that was outside my usual box but i dont think i will return for more

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janice Galloway is simply the best writer, ever.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smashing.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-reading I think. Pretty sure I read this collection of short stories when it first came out. Cannot be sure though. Liking it so far.

[Nichola · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very challenging particularly the final story... But a worthwhile read.