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Where You Find It
From the Scottish author of Foreign Parts comes a collection of short stories that gazes unflinchingly at the struggle to love against the odds.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
6 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Janice Galloway
52 books139 followersJanice 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 29, 2010
On Tuesday morning I took this book on the subway to start reading it. I had already read the first story, a wonderfully uncomfortable study of Valentines Day (and the reference from the front cover where one of the minor characters makes heart shaped sandwiches for her construction worker husband. Upon taking the book out of my bag I realized, 'oh shit, this book has a giant heart on the front and the whole book is bright pink--it looks like chick lit'. Normally I try not to bring books I'd be embarrassed to read in public with me on the train, or books I don't want the wrong type of person to think I'm a fellow-traveler (ie., evangelical) and think it proper to strike up a conversation. But now here I was on a crowded train reading a bright pink book with hearts on it. I don't know why I should feel embarrassed, what the fuck do I care what these other people think of me, me with the hair still looking like I just got out of bed, wearing pants with unfashionable holes in them. Why am I oblivious to the way that I look most days, or at least so much as I don't think about what other people will think of it (I'm thinking of this now only in introspection), but I got all freaked out by reading a bright pink book?
I don't know why.
I thought in my head that I'd explain how great and depressing her first novel was. Like anyone would say anything to me about the pink book. But maybe I just ran though possible conversation responses in my head to counter other things I thought people might be thinking.
Feeling awkward reading the book was probably good though, because these stories are all about the awkwardness of different types of relationships.
Most of these stories are probably worth more than three stars. Some maybe only three stars, and one or two I'd only give two stars too, but that is probably my fault in not getting what was going on. The stories range from being pretty straight forward dissections of relationships and the unbridgeable difficulties of dealing with anyone, all the compromises and shit that goes into them; to very abstract experiments in narration that make even figuring out who the characters are a chore. I'm all for difficult texts, but some of these were just too obtuse for me, in a four page story there just isn't enough room to be utterly confused about who is being talked about, who the narrator is supposed to be, and what just what is going on. This is where I blame myself, I could have read closer, or maybe what I was looking to figure out in these cases wasn't even there to be figured out.
My big problem with this book is that most of the stories are fine, but reading them one after another is numbing. Short story collections by an author are unnatural things. Most of the time (but not always) the stories in them were never meant to be read one after another. The placement of them in a book with other stories book ending them changes the context of the stories and the way that I would approach each story if I had just come across it on it's own. The change that the materiality of a short story collection gives to each individual story in the collection I personally feel is for the worse, it takes away the uniqueness of each story and adds them in unintentional ways to structure they were never meant to reside in.
Sort of like looking at a poster or a reproduction of Dali's artwork, yeah they look really good, sort of epic in their landscape and details, but then when you see Persistence of Memory in person hanging on the wall of MOMA and see how small it really is (I mean really really small), you realize that the whole context of the reproductions has distorted experience one would have when faced with the original in it's nude original context (of course you don't ever face this painting in it's nude context, since it's hanging in fucking MOMA and that is a context, even if you'd never heard of Dali before then you are encountering it in the context of 'masterpiece' just by it's placement in relatively the same spatiality of Starry Nights).
I guess this is just a pompous way of saying the parts are better than the whole.
I don't know why.
I thought in my head that I'd explain how great and depressing her first novel was. Like anyone would say anything to me about the pink book. But maybe I just ran though possible conversation responses in my head to counter other things I thought people might be thinking.
Feeling awkward reading the book was probably good though, because these stories are all about the awkwardness of different types of relationships.
Most of these stories are probably worth more than three stars. Some maybe only three stars, and one or two I'd only give two stars too, but that is probably my fault in not getting what was going on. The stories range from being pretty straight forward dissections of relationships and the unbridgeable difficulties of dealing with anyone, all the compromises and shit that goes into them; to very abstract experiments in narration that make even figuring out who the characters are a chore. I'm all for difficult texts, but some of these were just too obtuse for me, in a four page story there just isn't enough room to be utterly confused about who is being talked about, who the narrator is supposed to be, and what just what is going on. This is where I blame myself, I could have read closer, or maybe what I was looking to figure out in these cases wasn't even there to be figured out.
My big problem with this book is that most of the stories are fine, but reading them one after another is numbing. Short story collections by an author are unnatural things. Most of the time (but not always) the stories in them were never meant to be read one after another. The placement of them in a book with other stories book ending them changes the context of the stories and the way that I would approach each story if I had just come across it on it's own. The change that the materiality of a short story collection gives to each individual story in the collection I personally feel is for the worse, it takes away the uniqueness of each story and adds them in unintentional ways to structure they were never meant to reside in.
Sort of like looking at a poster or a reproduction of Dali's artwork, yeah they look really good, sort of epic in their landscape and details, but then when you see Persistence of Memory in person hanging on the wall of MOMA and see how small it really is (I mean really really small), you realize that the whole context of the reproductions has distorted experience one would have when faced with the original in it's nude original context (of course you don't ever face this painting in it's nude context, since it's hanging in fucking MOMA and that is a context, even if you'd never heard of Dali before then you are encountering it in the context of 'masterpiece' just by it's placement in relatively the same spatiality of Starry Nights).
I guess this is just a pompous way of saying the parts are better than the whole.
August 7, 2016
I was slightly put off reading this book because it's being a collection of short stories and, judging by the cover and the quotes on the back, it sounded like it would be love stories. I'm glad I did in the end, though.
I guess it kind of is a collection of love stories, in that love is a common theme, but it couldn't really be considered romantic. The relationships are more often awkward and unfulfilling than they are warm. Sometimes they're out and out chilling. At least one story isn't about relationships at all, unless it has some abstract level I didn't pick up on, and the variety of themes, writing styles and settings is impressive - it's almost like reading multiple authors.
A lot of the stories are set in Glasgow, or more generally in Scotland, and many of Galloway's characters speak with accents or Scots idioms. Incidentally, her characters are all perfect - they're all entirely believable and again, this is impressive because they're all so different (although being generally awkward and uncertain seems to unite a fair few of them). As I often find with short stories, though, I was left wanting to know more. I wanted to know what happened after the story had finished and about the events that had led up to it beginning.
Perhaps the one disadvantage is that the stories, side by side sort of jar against each other. This is another common problem I have with collections of short stories - often they were never really meant to be read one after another, but here I am with a paperback in my bag which I want to read one page after the next. Fortunately, there is an over-arching theme here, but I still think it would be better to dip in and out of this book.
Nevertheless, I surprised myself by enjoying it. I'd never even heard of Galloway before now but having spent less than five minutes googling I'm now curious about her other books, which appear to be very well received novels. Sooner or later I'm bound to pick one of them up.
I guess it kind of is a collection of love stories, in that love is a common theme, but it couldn't really be considered romantic. The relationships are more often awkward and unfulfilling than they are warm. Sometimes they're out and out chilling. At least one story isn't about relationships at all, unless it has some abstract level I didn't pick up on, and the variety of themes, writing styles and settings is impressive - it's almost like reading multiple authors.
A lot of the stories are set in Glasgow, or more generally in Scotland, and many of Galloway's characters speak with accents or Scots idioms. Incidentally, her characters are all perfect - they're all entirely believable and again, this is impressive because they're all so different (although being generally awkward and uncertain seems to unite a fair few of them). As I often find with short stories, though, I was left wanting to know more. I wanted to know what happened after the story had finished and about the events that had led up to it beginning.
Perhaps the one disadvantage is that the stories, side by side sort of jar against each other. This is another common problem I have with collections of short stories - often they were never really meant to be read one after another, but here I am with a paperback in my bag which I want to read one page after the next. Fortunately, there is an over-arching theme here, but I still think it would be better to dip in and out of this book.
Nevertheless, I surprised myself by enjoying it. I'd never even heard of Galloway before now but having spent less than five minutes googling I'm now curious about her other books, which appear to be very well received novels. Sooner or later I'm bound to pick one of them up.
June 29, 2019
Life is too short to finish this book. Not in the mood for this style of miserylit right now.
December 30, 2024
There are better stories, there are worse stories. But all of them are depressing or have this bittersweet sad vibe to them. Such is the Scottish literature.
November 17, 2008
Initially promising, but may have turned out to be the most boring collection of short stories ever written.
December 12, 2009
I loved these stories only problem I was reading it for Higher English!
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March 5, 2013And odd but charming collection of short stories by a Scottish writer. I reviewed it for the SF Chronicle
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews