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A collection of some of the best known and most loved works by one of Scotland's 'most gifted and original writers' (Times Literary Supplement)

About the Author

Janice Galloway's first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, now widely regarded as a Scottish contemporary classic, was published in 1990 and won the MIND/Allan Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel, Foreign Parts, won the American Academy of Arts and Letters EM Forster Award while her third, Clara, about the tempestuous life of nineteenth-century pianist Clara Wieck Schumann, won the Saltire Award in 2002. Collaborative texts include an opera with Sally Beamish and three cross-discipline works with Anne Bevan, the Orcadian sculptor. Her 'anti-memoir', This Is Not About Me, was published by Granta in September 2008 to universal critical acclaim. She lives in Lanarkshire

Reviews

A book that can be felt on your pulses. Galloway is a literary endoscopist: she gets beneath the surface of life and exposes the nerves...Writing has rarely been so visceral
*The Independent*

Spiky, bleak stories ... moving and poignant. Sometimes you have to read them twice
*Evening Standard*

Her compassion is compassion with bite, her beauty is beauty that stings, and her comfort always comes with a sense of loss. It doesn't make for an easy read, but as with the best medicine, it's good for you
*Independent on Sunday*

Beautifully crafted and true-to-life stories
*The Times*

Galloway's ear for dialogue is astonishing, almost musical
*The Observer*