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Here in the World
A debut anthology of short fiction captures the lives of a group of women as they grapple with the complex mysteries of sex, intimacy, adulthood, love, family, faith, and reality.
The women in Victoria Lancelotta's debut collection of stories live in the space between memory and desire, where what they see around them and what they know to be true can be vastly different things. They live in a world where time is malleable, stones are food, the body is an altar, the confessional is a difficult paradise; and the family is the last place to look for home. Edgy, brilliant, and disturbing, Here in the World presents us with short stories about women who, however flawed or compromised, are fierce and unforgettable.
The women in Victoria Lancelotta's debut collection of stories live in the space between memory and desire, where what they see around them and what they know to be true can be vastly different things. They live in a world where time is malleable, stones are food, the body is an altar, the confessional is a difficult paradise; and the family is the last place to look for home. Edgy, brilliant, and disturbing, Here in the World presents us with short stories about women who, however flawed or compromised, are fierce and unforgettable.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
168 pages, Paperback
First published October 25, 2000
2 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Victoria Lancelotta
14 books14 followersVictoria Lancelotta’s Ways To Disappear: Stories was the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Contest winner. She is also the author of Here in the World: 13 Stories, and
the novels Far and Coeurs Blesses. Her short fiction has been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and magazines including Agni, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others.
She has been a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, and is the recipient of a Tennessee Individual Artist Fellowship, multiple Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grants, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
the novels Far and Coeurs Blesses. Her short fiction has been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and magazines including Agni, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others.
She has been a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, and is the recipient of a Tennessee Individual Artist Fellowship, multiple Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grants, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 4, 2024
While writing stories that are a little gritty, or unhappy, or not considered ‘normal’ about society (broken families, disabilities, sexual experiences, among others), Victoria Lancelotta uses such beautiful language and striking images in her collection of short stories Here in the World that I fell in love immediately.
Here in the World by Victoria Lancelotta is a collection of thirteen stories. Each story is written from the first person narration of a woman (each story being a different woman) and her experience in the world, typically through the lens of relationships, more specifically her relationship to men/a man.
My favorite story was the first story, “The Guide”, starting off with “Listen. Here is a love story.” And then “We filed to the alter in doll-sized veils and patent leather shoes, heads bowed, our trembling hands folded and held chest-high, and before kneeling to receive the wafer from the priest…” The story then weaves the imagery of church and religion through a woman’s relationship to a blind man who is rough during sex, to which the narrator muses over the pain and guilt she feels in this complicated relationship. The story ends on “What could a blind man pray for, what thing that he would get?” I think this was my favorite story of the bunch (Lancelotta started off strong!) for the powerful imagery and lingering questions it left.
Her stories are not primarily focused on plot. Rather, I’d say they use the plot as a tool and opportunity to paint beautiful images with language and to present the reader with philosophical reflections in the questions and comments the narrators make. For example, in her final story, “Here in the World,” the narrator opens the story remembering what it’s like to be a young girl and get all the attention from boys who drive by as often happens when girls walk down the street. This experience of attention will thread through the main plot of the story which is that she is separated from her husband, soon-to-be ex, with whom her son still lives. She’s waiting for the son’s arrival to visit her new home, and she says, “I walk through all this carrying an invisible girl, buried under the flesh of a wife, a mother, an ex-wife by September, my hand out as I cross streets with an invisible boy, little outline just so-high when I saw him last, solid body, feet right on the ground outside that big other house with his father next to him.” What poignant language to reflect on these kinds of emotions and experiences so many women have either had, or can still relate to.
Lancelotta is a thoughtful poet and each of her stories uses this skill to create a universal longing, even among different stories. She threads main plots alongside thematic events that work together to create a bigger message in such a short space. The stories were beautiful.
I was drawn to some more than others (I particularly was less interested in her stories near the end which involved a few of the narrators living on the beach). I’m not sure why those types of stories appeal to me less — I can’t say it’s because that life is less familiar to me (because the dark urban settings that I love reading about aren’t exactly my life either), but maybe it’s because the connotation of such a life feels less taboo, despite the plot. Either way, I’d say the collection definitely includes some stories that are stronger and more vivid than others (as with most anthologies).
It definitely includes transgressive elements, and anyone who enjoys pretty language, deep reflections, and subtly taboo relationships, will love this book.
I bought this book by accident — I was at 2nd and Charles, a used bookstore, just browsing books. Couldn’t find anything by authors I knew who I hadn’t read yet, and they had a sale going on for buy 2 get 2 free, so there’s no way I couldn’t find more books when they were free books anyway. So I’m just pulling out book after book across a ton of different shelves and this cover image (along with the title) caught my eye. They say “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” but there was no way this was your average fiction book. I skimmed a story and was sold. I’m grateful I stumbled upon this and was inspired by Lancellota’s craft!
(On another note, I found Lancelotta's novel, Far, to be boring. She uses beautiful language, but it works best for her short stories and is much more difficult for her to draw out through a whole book).
Here in the World by Victoria Lancelotta is a collection of thirteen stories. Each story is written from the first person narration of a woman (each story being a different woman) and her experience in the world, typically through the lens of relationships, more specifically her relationship to men/a man.
My favorite story was the first story, “The Guide”, starting off with “Listen. Here is a love story.” And then “We filed to the alter in doll-sized veils and patent leather shoes, heads bowed, our trembling hands folded and held chest-high, and before kneeling to receive the wafer from the priest…” The story then weaves the imagery of church and religion through a woman’s relationship to a blind man who is rough during sex, to which the narrator muses over the pain and guilt she feels in this complicated relationship. The story ends on “What could a blind man pray for, what thing that he would get?” I think this was my favorite story of the bunch (Lancelotta started off strong!) for the powerful imagery and lingering questions it left.
Her stories are not primarily focused on plot. Rather, I’d say they use the plot as a tool and opportunity to paint beautiful images with language and to present the reader with philosophical reflections in the questions and comments the narrators make. For example, in her final story, “Here in the World,” the narrator opens the story remembering what it’s like to be a young girl and get all the attention from boys who drive by as often happens when girls walk down the street. This experience of attention will thread through the main plot of the story which is that she is separated from her husband, soon-to-be ex, with whom her son still lives. She’s waiting for the son’s arrival to visit her new home, and she says, “I walk through all this carrying an invisible girl, buried under the flesh of a wife, a mother, an ex-wife by September, my hand out as I cross streets with an invisible boy, little outline just so-high when I saw him last, solid body, feet right on the ground outside that big other house with his father next to him.” What poignant language to reflect on these kinds of emotions and experiences so many women have either had, or can still relate to.
Lancelotta is a thoughtful poet and each of her stories uses this skill to create a universal longing, even among different stories. She threads main plots alongside thematic events that work together to create a bigger message in such a short space. The stories were beautiful.
I was drawn to some more than others (I particularly was less interested in her stories near the end which involved a few of the narrators living on the beach). I’m not sure why those types of stories appeal to me less — I can’t say it’s because that life is less familiar to me (because the dark urban settings that I love reading about aren’t exactly my life either), but maybe it’s because the connotation of such a life feels less taboo, despite the plot. Either way, I’d say the collection definitely includes some stories that are stronger and more vivid than others (as with most anthologies).
It definitely includes transgressive elements, and anyone who enjoys pretty language, deep reflections, and subtly taboo relationships, will love this book.
I bought this book by accident — I was at 2nd and Charles, a used bookstore, just browsing books. Couldn’t find anything by authors I knew who I hadn’t read yet, and they had a sale going on for buy 2 get 2 free, so there’s no way I couldn’t find more books when they were free books anyway. So I’m just pulling out book after book across a ton of different shelves and this cover image (along with the title) caught my eye. They say “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” but there was no way this was your average fiction book. I skimmed a story and was sold. I’m grateful I stumbled upon this and was inspired by Lancellota’s craft!
(On another note, I found Lancelotta's novel, Far, to be boring. She uses beautiful language, but it works best for her short stories and is much more difficult for her to draw out through a whole book).
August 15, 2016
As other reviewers have noted, this is not a collection of 13 short stories, but vignettes. In other words, there is no "beginning, middle, and end" in the sense of "short story." This is slice of life" fiction. No real plot, exposition, conflict, or dénouement.
Having said that, if you enjoy watching a person work the word-craft, you'll enjoy every one of these gems. The enjoyment is immediate and sticks with you. I mean: from the first sentence of each vignette you'll find yourself pulled into and strung along by Lancelotta's prose immediately--
Listen. Here is a love story. "The Guide"
This is the sort of air that sticks, the kind you want to pull off you, away from your skin, ... "What I Know"
There were these things I saw through the window: ... "Fesitval"
The man in the house next door is finished dying. "Other Water"
--all the way to...not a "conclusion" but a "leaving" I think is a better word. We leave that world Lancelotta painted for us in each vignette, painted so carefully. In each sentence you can feel her painstakingly work the words. We leave each world touched by her prose. That's the power and the craft in the haunting. It sticks with you. It's made to stick with you. As one of her characters says in "In Houses": I have been opened up, rewritten.
So will you.
Having said that, if you enjoy watching a person work the word-craft, you'll enjoy every one of these gems. The enjoyment is immediate and sticks with you. I mean: from the first sentence of each vignette you'll find yourself pulled into and strung along by Lancelotta's prose immediately--
Listen. Here is a love story. "The Guide"
This is the sort of air that sticks, the kind you want to pull off you, away from your skin, ... "What I Know"
There were these things I saw through the window: ... "Fesitval"
The man in the house next door is finished dying. "Other Water"
--all the way to...not a "conclusion" but a "leaving" I think is a better word. We leave that world Lancelotta painted for us in each vignette, painted so carefully. In each sentence you can feel her painstakingly work the words. We leave each world touched by her prose. That's the power and the craft in the haunting. It sticks with you. It's made to stick with you. As one of her characters says in "In Houses": I have been opened up, rewritten.
So will you.
Read
December 21, 2011HERE IN THE WORLD is an eerie and penetrating début collection of stories whose tone, setting, and characters resonate far beyond their origin and its confines: Baltimore's working-class, Roman Catholic neighborhoods. And yet those confines provide the form by which Lancelotta’s narrators shape their siren song of a particularly female estrangement, one that can seem the only means of escaping a body objectified by its culture and viewed with deep suspicion by a religion founded, paradoxically, on the mysteries of incarnation.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media)
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media)
February 11, 2009
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I read it in a day, because it was so short, and maybe I would have appreciated it more if I had slowed down. Each story felt like three different stories, none of which were particularly unique or interesting. Everything was predictable, but no loose ends were tied. It was irritating.
August 10, 2009
These stories upended me when I read them a few years ago. I was working (worriedly) on my own collection and I thought, if her characters are giving up that much, maybe mine need to, too. I felt a kind of safety in numbers. These stories are tough and honest and beautiful and some of them I wish I'd written, like the sister story. And the blind man story. And -
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews