Break.up

Description

'A smart, allusive meditation on the sheer fragility of experience and feeling' Colm Toibin The internet has collapsed the boundaries of time, space and desire. However far apart lovers are, they can instantly be present. So can they ever really break up? After the end of a love affair conducted largely online, the narrator of Break.up travels across Europe navigating the complexities of modern love. As she makes her pilgrimage through offline space - on railways, on buses, on planes and, above all, on foot - she crosses the borders of not only place but genre, ranging widely into eclectic essays on music, boredom, shame, photography, marriage and art. Break.up blends the personal and the intellectual to tell a mystery story about the aftermath of a relationship. From Rome to Budapest, Freud to Foucault, algorithms to nostalgia, Walsh's long-awaited first novel is a stimulating, original work which dismantles what we know of love, and how we make art from it.

Joanna Walsh's work has appeared in Granta, The Stinging Fly and Guernica, among others. She is the author of the short story collections Fractals, Vertigo (shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize) and Words from the World's End, the non-fiction work Hotel and the digitally groundbreaking novella Seed. She was awarded the 2017 Arts Foundation Fellowship in Literature for the manuscript of Break.Up, which is her first novel.

Melding travel writing with philosophy and emotion, Walsh is a true original * Stylist * Richly observant writing ... has the making of poetry * TLS * Break.up goes further still than Walsh's previous work in challenging genre boundaries * Guardian * A smart, intriguing book * Daily Mail * Walsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery... boldly intellectual work * Financial Times * A novel about love in digital spaces that takes the time to breathe, exhaling into the muggy air of real places. A bereft protagonist is consoled by the energy of philosophical fragments and messy objects. Walsh has surgical expertise in the dissection of online excitements and misdirections but puts us in the sensual world of Dior lipsticks and Perfecto jackets. The result is bracing. It's a new real where our emotions are always betwixt and between our devices and what feels like the ache in our heart. -- Sherry Turkle, author of Evocative Objects Break.up is steeped in the pure poetics of now. It is a smart, allusive meditation on the sheer fragility of experience and feeling -- Colm Toibin This luminous philosophical novel casts dye into the spaces between things, the gaps between certainties, colors them visible, valuable. Sometimes these take the form and hue of a train journey, or time spent in a city, or the pause between two emails. Sometimes you could call them love. -- Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse Praise for Joanna Walsh: Walsh is a sublimely elegant writer... artful and intelligent * New Statesman * Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers -- Deborah Levy Praise for Vertigo: Her work trades on the literary genres of the miniature-short stories, essays, even postcards-reminiscent of Marcel Schwob, Clarice Lispector, Roland Barthes, and Lydia Davis * Paris Review * Original and breathtaking -- Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick Packs a wallop -- Jeff Vandermeer Walsh's closest literary ally is probably Lydia Davis, with whom she shares a brevity and starkness of expression. . . Walsh's refreshing humour - sometimes biting; sometimes absurd - lends her work a poignancy that is genuinely affecting * Times Literary Supplement * Beautifully simple and unembellished, Walsh's writing - most captivating in its ability to unnerve - is cleverly revealing -- Claire Hazelton * Guardian * Deliciously sharp ... With wry humour and profound sensitivity, Walsh takes what is mundane and transforms it into something otherworldly with sentences that can make your heart stop. A feat of language * Kirkus Reviews (Starred) * Walsh is an inventive, honest writer. In her world, objects may be closer and far more intricate than they appear; these stories offer a compelling pitch into the inner life. * Publishers Weekly * Moments of blazing perspicacity, creativity, intelligence, and dark humour are insanely abundant in [Walsh's] writing -- Natalie Helberg * Numero Cinq * Her work trades on the literary genres of the miniature - short stories, essays, even postcards - reminiscent of Marcel Schwob, Clarice Lispector, Roland Barthes and Lydia Davis * Paris Review *