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Words from a Glass Bubble
This book gathers together for the first time many of Vanessa Gebbie's stories. 'Words From a Glass Bubble' is about coming to terms with the cards we are dealt. The stories pivot around the recognition that those who seem powerless can prove to be the strongest catalysts for change, both in themselves and in others.
Batty Annie fishes for her son's soul in a disused railway tunnel. Tom's grandmother flies on a circus trapeze. Spike relates to cacti better than people. Eva Duffy befriends a statuette of the Virgin Mary. Pepito pretends he is a priest and suffers the consequences. Shelly has a colonic irrigation to rid herself of the past. Billy hears stones when he shakes his head. Dodie from The General Stores falls for a man who teaches her 'to think', and Mikey mourns his wife through graffiti.From Ireland to Czechoslovakia to Wales to Alaska to Ibiza, from contemporary New York to a clinic in the future, this collection will take you on a journey. And Harry? He just goes fishing.
Batty Annie fishes for her son's soul in a disused railway tunnel. Tom's grandmother flies on a circus trapeze. Spike relates to cacti better than people. Eva Duffy befriends a statuette of the Virgin Mary. Pepito pretends he is a priest and suffers the consequences. Shelly has a colonic irrigation to rid herself of the past. Billy hears stones when he shakes his head. Dodie from The General Stores falls for a man who teaches her 'to think', and Mikey mourns his wife through graffiti.From Ireland to Czechoslovakia to Wales to Alaska to Ibiza, from contemporary New York to a clinic in the future, this collection will take you on a journey. And Harry? He just goes fishing.
- GenresShort Stories
150 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Vanessa Gebbie
25 books30 followersVanessa Gebbie is a novelist, short storyist, editor, writing tutor and occasional poet. Her novel The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury) was selected as a Financial Times Book of the Year and Guardian readers’ book of the year.
She is author of two collections: Words from a Glass Bubble - a collection of mainly prize-winning stories - and Storm Warning (Salt Modern Fiction). She is contributing editor of Short Circuit - Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt). Her fifth book in as many years is forthcoming later in 2012.
Vanessa's stories have been commissioned by literary journals, the British Council, for BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4, and are widely anthologised. Married with two grown sons, she lives in Sussex. www.vanessagebbie.com
She is author of two collections: Words from a Glass Bubble - a collection of mainly prize-winning stories - and Storm Warning (Salt Modern Fiction). She is contributing editor of Short Circuit - Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt). Her fifth book in as many years is forthcoming later in 2012.
Vanessa's stories have been commissioned by literary journals, the British Council, for BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4, and are widely anthologised. Married with two grown sons, she lives in Sussex. www.vanessagebbie.com
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 31, 2008
It's hard to find time to read all the books I buy. And then, when I start reading, I find myself dabbling, dipping in, and
wandering off to dabble in another -- and unless it's an epic novel that has curled its mighty fist around my head, I can walk away and return as much as a month later. Such is my reading life. Poetry, flash, an occasional story between novels by the big kids.
This book, "Words from a Glass Bubble," a collection of short stories, is a spectacular exception and would not let me go.
And my heart is pounding because I feel like I should just give up writing altogether. Normally I read, get inspired by good authors, and a little piece of my brain says "I can do that."
But Vanessa Gebbie is one of those scribes who is a natural born writer, a literary writer of such rich and magnificence
resources that I'm simply ashamed to call what I do writing after reading her. She will tell you that she learned, and there is no doubt that she works to hone her craft in ways that I doubt I have the endurance for, but the exquisite talent that she brings to her work is all hers and clearly outstanding.
The stories are little diamonds that turn this way and that, sparkling with language and ideas, and when you look deeper, there is always another indigo facet right beneath the surface beckoning you deeper still. It is just maddening to read such wonderful prose and know that I could never, in a billion years, do it.
This entire book is filled with prize winning and short listed stories from the presigious Fish competitions and many others. For the serious writer and lucky reader, this is a must.
wandering off to dabble in another -- and unless it's an epic novel that has curled its mighty fist around my head, I can walk away and return as much as a month later. Such is my reading life. Poetry, flash, an occasional story between novels by the big kids.
This book, "Words from a Glass Bubble," a collection of short stories, is a spectacular exception and would not let me go.
And my heart is pounding because I feel like I should just give up writing altogether. Normally I read, get inspired by good authors, and a little piece of my brain says "I can do that."
But Vanessa Gebbie is one of those scribes who is a natural born writer, a literary writer of such rich and magnificence
resources that I'm simply ashamed to call what I do writing after reading her. She will tell you that she learned, and there is no doubt that she works to hone her craft in ways that I doubt I have the endurance for, but the exquisite talent that she brings to her work is all hers and clearly outstanding.
The stories are little diamonds that turn this way and that, sparkling with language and ideas, and when you look deeper, there is always another indigo facet right beneath the surface beckoning you deeper still. It is just maddening to read such wonderful prose and know that I could never, in a billion years, do it.
This entire book is filled with prize winning and short listed stories from the presigious Fish competitions and many others. For the serious writer and lucky reader, this is a must.
April 18, 2016
147 pages, 19 stories - several of them 3 pages long. I think the first will be enough to make you want to read to the end of the book.
With old whodunnits, one assumes the butler did it. In a story like the first - "Words from a Glass Bubble" - one assumes that the symbolic bubble will be burst, and indeed it is, though much else happens besides. The characters are believable, the descriptions spare and effective, but I'd like to focus on the literary aspects. In the first page we learn that the glass bauble contains the Virgin Mary (the "VM") and child. Eva lives with Connor. It sounds as if their child, Declan, died young 20 or so years before. The VM talks to Eva who often feels the voice in her stomach (her womb?). Then we hear about Finn Piper - an illiterate farmer who lives alone and is first seen walking naked across his yard. Already the bauble's gathering meaning: the VM expresses Eva's repressed thoughts maybe, the VM+child pairing echoed by Eva+Finn/Declan. Throughout, (and usually associated with Finn) birds are mentioned in description or simile - crow, rook, buzzard, sparrow, eagle, cuckoo, pigeon. Eva befriends Finn and takes him to a children's party, the VM + child (extracted from the bauble) in her pocket. At the end the husband returns the VM+child to the bauble, and starts hearing the VM too. Then the Declan=Finn identity is reinforced, the trapped spirit released like a ghost, triumphant, though I did wonder where the Lourdes water went.
This description might lead you to think that you can hear the gears grinding through the piece. Not at all - the symbolism doesn't fit together over-neatly, and there's always enough human interest to distract readers from wondering how all the balls are being kept in the air.
The second story also ends with a man beginning to share the long-held fantasy world of a woman, the woman not disconcerted to see/hear things that others don't. The style's different though, and styles continue to ring the changes until "Irrigation" (mentioned in my Riptide write-up) which comes from the same school as "Words from a Glass Bubble". The next story, "Excavation" (only 3 pages or so), breaks all the preceding moulds - my favourite piece so far. Authorial orientation changes too - sometimes the narrator's invisible, sometimes she's puppeteer, ring-master or quizzing, challenging storyteller. In "Dodie's Gift" the narrator's in charge, having the last word. "The Lych-Warmer" too has an active narrator. After that there are some quieter pieces, though "Cactus Man"'s not at all bad, and "Fuck Magnolia" returns to the type of story that's her strength - with multiple themes held in balance while the narrative drives forward.
Ruth Padel in her latest book described some poems as having "a taut cat's cradle of sonic echoing". Some stories here create a similar cat's cradle of concepts where links are developed between (say) 3 people and a significant object. When everything's finally connected to everything else (in the first story this happens when Connor connects with the bauble) the story achieves a spatial (rather than linear) closure. Contrast that with "Harry's catch" where a fishing story is punctuated by flashbacks. Though more than merely competent it's a standard flip-flop format, and doesn't stand out amongst the competition. This is the only piece that for me disappoints through lack of ambition. Some other pieces (e.g. "The Kettle on the Boat", "Simon's Skin", "The Carob Tree", "Closed Doors"), even if they don't succeed, at least try to be a little different. All in all there are enough good pieces in enough styles for the book to be used as an anthology demonstrating how stories should be written nowadays.
Traits? There are old virgins, wall eyes, "joined up houses", dead children, fostered/adopted children, birds, and the sand gets everywhere. Several churches too - the church-cleaners are perhaps examples of the more general "body" cleaners that pervade the stories. Many characters are outcasts longing for old wounds to be healed, or are merely seeking a firmer identity. It's striking how early the characters introduce themselves (or another character) to the reader - many first pages have "I'm X" or "X is".
It's tempting to compare Baines with Gebbie - both are Salt-published females of roughly the same generation with prize-winning writing credentials and experience of teaching creative writing. Gebbie plans to write poetry. Baines writes drama and used to edit "Metropolitan", a short story magazine. Their stories are rarely formalist or ludic. For the most part they use single-threaded, character-based narratives without plot punch-lines. They tend towards different ways of making a story "short": Baines opts for a brief story-time duration, Gebbie's more likely to hollow out than slice, and is more sensationalist (or striking).
With old whodunnits, one assumes the butler did it. In a story like the first - "Words from a Glass Bubble" - one assumes that the symbolic bubble will be burst, and indeed it is, though much else happens besides. The characters are believable, the descriptions spare and effective, but I'd like to focus on the literary aspects. In the first page we learn that the glass bauble contains the Virgin Mary (the "VM") and child. Eva lives with Connor. It sounds as if their child, Declan, died young 20 or so years before. The VM talks to Eva who often feels the voice in her stomach (her womb?). Then we hear about Finn Piper - an illiterate farmer who lives alone and is first seen walking naked across his yard. Already the bauble's gathering meaning: the VM expresses Eva's repressed thoughts maybe, the VM+child pairing echoed by Eva+Finn/Declan. Throughout, (and usually associated with Finn) birds are mentioned in description or simile - crow, rook, buzzard, sparrow, eagle, cuckoo, pigeon. Eva befriends Finn and takes him to a children's party, the VM + child (extracted from the bauble) in her pocket. At the end the husband returns the VM+child to the bauble, and starts hearing the VM too. Then the Declan=Finn identity is reinforced, the trapped spirit released like a ghost, triumphant, though I did wonder where the Lourdes water went.
This description might lead you to think that you can hear the gears grinding through the piece. Not at all - the symbolism doesn't fit together over-neatly, and there's always enough human interest to distract readers from wondering how all the balls are being kept in the air.
The second story also ends with a man beginning to share the long-held fantasy world of a woman, the woman not disconcerted to see/hear things that others don't. The style's different though, and styles continue to ring the changes until "Irrigation" (mentioned in my Riptide write-up) which comes from the same school as "Words from a Glass Bubble". The next story, "Excavation" (only 3 pages or so), breaks all the preceding moulds - my favourite piece so far. Authorial orientation changes too - sometimes the narrator's invisible, sometimes she's puppeteer, ring-master or quizzing, challenging storyteller. In "Dodie's Gift" the narrator's in charge, having the last word. "The Lych-Warmer" too has an active narrator. After that there are some quieter pieces, though "Cactus Man"'s not at all bad, and "Fuck Magnolia" returns to the type of story that's her strength - with multiple themes held in balance while the narrative drives forward.
Ruth Padel in her latest book described some poems as having "a taut cat's cradle of sonic echoing". Some stories here create a similar cat's cradle of concepts where links are developed between (say) 3 people and a significant object. When everything's finally connected to everything else (in the first story this happens when Connor connects with the bauble) the story achieves a spatial (rather than linear) closure. Contrast that with "Harry's catch" where a fishing story is punctuated by flashbacks. Though more than merely competent it's a standard flip-flop format, and doesn't stand out amongst the competition. This is the only piece that for me disappoints through lack of ambition. Some other pieces (e.g. "The Kettle on the Boat", "Simon's Skin", "The Carob Tree", "Closed Doors"), even if they don't succeed, at least try to be a little different. All in all there are enough good pieces in enough styles for the book to be used as an anthology demonstrating how stories should be written nowadays.
Traits? There are old virgins, wall eyes, "joined up houses", dead children, fostered/adopted children, birds, and the sand gets everywhere. Several churches too - the church-cleaners are perhaps examples of the more general "body" cleaners that pervade the stories. Many characters are outcasts longing for old wounds to be healed, or are merely seeking a firmer identity. It's striking how early the characters introduce themselves (or another character) to the reader - many first pages have "I'm X" or "X is".
It's tempting to compare Baines with Gebbie - both are Salt-published females of roughly the same generation with prize-winning writing credentials and experience of teaching creative writing. Gebbie plans to write poetry. Baines writes drama and used to edit "Metropolitan", a short story magazine. Their stories are rarely formalist or ludic. For the most part they use single-threaded, character-based narratives without plot punch-lines. They tend towards different ways of making a story "short": Baines opts for a brief story-time duration, Gebbie's more likely to hollow out than slice, and is more sensationalist (or striking).
April 5, 2011
'bout time I read this, so many have recommended. Also bought her 'Short Circuit' (A Guide to the Art of the Short Story).
..enjoyed most of these stories, review forthcoming. (busy at the moment)
a fine collection, collecting the odd moments when things open up for people,. maybe the intervention of divinity in the first (title) story, or when someone tries on an addict's skin in another.
Some stories are breathtaking - 'Dodie's Gift' for example, about the shopgirl in the seaside town who is unsure if she's been raped or not in the sand dunes, and 'Cactus Man' about a man meeting his social worker and exposing unexpected depths. Some however have a little of the 'exercise' about them (eg 'Closed Doors', a shoeshiner reflects on the owners of the shoes left otside hotel doors, or 'Excavation' which imagines someone excavating into a person). They're still good, just not quite as thrilling as some of the others.
I'll read more of her stuff.
..enjoyed most of these stories, review forthcoming. (busy at the moment)
a fine collection, collecting the odd moments when things open up for people,. maybe the intervention of divinity in the first (title) story, or when someone tries on an addict's skin in another.
Some stories are breathtaking - 'Dodie's Gift' for example, about the shopgirl in the seaside town who is unsure if she's been raped or not in the sand dunes, and 'Cactus Man' about a man meeting his social worker and exposing unexpected depths. Some however have a little of the 'exercise' about them (eg 'Closed Doors', a shoeshiner reflects on the owners of the shoes left otside hotel doors, or 'Excavation' which imagines someone excavating into a person). They're still good, just not quite as thrilling as some of the others.
I'll read more of her stuff.
March 16, 2018
Enjoyed reading this at the time, but none of the stories really stuck with me. Enjoyable, but forgettable.
May 21, 2023
A short story collection that will break you apart and reassemble you very slightly differently. That sounds so arty-farty, but that is how lots of these stories made me feel. Each of them is uncomfortable to read, as Gebbie brings us close to grief, trauma, addiction and other human plights. She brings us close enough that we want to cover our faces and say 'no closer!' but then she stops. Gebbie's craft is so controlled, her language so precise and her images so vivid that I know I'll carry some of these stories with me for years.
December 8, 2022
The standard of short stories I was exposed to in our last set text set the bar so high in terms of narrative and writing that this fell a little flat for me in places, but I feel if I revisited this collection again I would appreciate it more!
July 28, 2008
"Words from a Glass Bubble" by Vanessa Gebbie is a collection of nineteen of her short stories, compiled in a handsome hardback from Salt Publishing. There's no overarching narrative, but although the stories are very different, some themes and images crop up more than once.
Gebbie's talent is to shine a light onto her characters, giving us brief insights into their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, and--most of all--their mistakes, before moving on, leaving us with the hope that the characters too will carry on, make better decisions, have better luck, once the spotlight is removed.
Each story has its own voice, from "Words in a Glass Bubble" itself, where a family tries to come to terms with the loss of their son, to "Smoking Down There", where a child naively recounts her friend's story of how she almost inadvertently saved her baby brother from being disposed of at birth. The fragmentary, butterfly narrative convinces as that of a child. 'But then, if you smoked down there why didn't the hairs catch fire? That's what I wanted to know. But the bucket. Why wash out of a bucket when there were perfectly nice china things?'
Gebbie doesn't shy away from the darker side of life. One story, "Irrigation", goes into great detail--too great detail for this reader--about an enema. In "Dodie's Gift", the central character is left lost and wondering, "...if someone takes something you were going to give them anyway, is that stealing?' Reading this story, it's hard to decide whether to give her a hug or a good shake. Either, you think, might damage her beyond repair.
This story contains an image that recurs--'But there, at the bottom of the hollow, a gull has had a meal, and the sand holds white bone, red bone, skin....' The predator devours, leaves what it doesn't want, and moves on. What's been devoured, abandoned, somehow has to move on, too. Its life now may not be what it envisaged, but it still holds significance.
None of the stories is too long, although it's easy to feel some are too short. The characters live on in our minds and we can't help wondering what will happen next. If they'll come out all right.
This collection is definitely one to savour. Read a story, put it down, think about it, come back--the whole can't be devoured in an afternoon.
Gebbie's talent is to shine a light onto her characters, giving us brief insights into their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, and--most of all--their mistakes, before moving on, leaving us with the hope that the characters too will carry on, make better decisions, have better luck, once the spotlight is removed.
Each story has its own voice, from "Words in a Glass Bubble" itself, where a family tries to come to terms with the loss of their son, to "Smoking Down There", where a child naively recounts her friend's story of how she almost inadvertently saved her baby brother from being disposed of at birth. The fragmentary, butterfly narrative convinces as that of a child. 'But then, if you smoked down there why didn't the hairs catch fire? That's what I wanted to know. But the bucket. Why wash out of a bucket when there were perfectly nice china things?'
Gebbie doesn't shy away from the darker side of life. One story, "Irrigation", goes into great detail--too great detail for this reader--about an enema. In "Dodie's Gift", the central character is left lost and wondering, "...if someone takes something you were going to give them anyway, is that stealing?' Reading this story, it's hard to decide whether to give her a hug or a good shake. Either, you think, might damage her beyond repair.
This story contains an image that recurs--'But there, at the bottom of the hollow, a gull has had a meal, and the sand holds white bone, red bone, skin....' The predator devours, leaves what it doesn't want, and moves on. What's been devoured, abandoned, somehow has to move on, too. Its life now may not be what it envisaged, but it still holds significance.
None of the stories is too long, although it's easy to feel some are too short. The characters live on in our minds and we can't help wondering what will happen next. If they'll come out all right.
This collection is definitely one to savour. Read a story, put it down, think about it, come back--the whole can't be devoured in an afternoon.
May 12, 2010
Wonderful. The stories in Gebbie's collection are like bubbles within bubbles, magical and multilayered. Simple, mundane lives of her characters ooze emotive richness, often against the background of Biblical contexts, which Gebbie truly brings down to earth and explores in their everyday implications for human lives.
I read it at one sitting, so it was quite a page turner, but then the second, slower reading was far more enriching. There a lot of mass below the tip of this iceberg of a book.
I read it at one sitting, so it was quite a page turner, but then the second, slower reading was far more enriching. There a lot of mass below the tip of this iceberg of a book.
June 16, 2008
These are wonderful, insightful stories, the sort that make you want to tread more carefully through life after reading them; stories which enrich and deepen the reading experience. And such range! Humour, history, anger, love and pathos. Everything you could ask for from a short story collection. All beautifully packaged in a slim hardback volume that feels just right in your hands. Writing - and reading - at its very best.
July 3, 2012
This collection of award-winning short stories is superb. Each story is multi-layered and beautifully written. My favourites were: 'On The Edge', 'Irrigation', 'Dodie's Gift' and 'There Were Tigers'. Some of her themes don't always make for comfortable reading but these stories cut to the truth and touch the heart. Highly recommended.
June 19, 2015
A moving collection of short stories. Moving because they concern characters deprived of love and affection and struggling to find them; loss, grief and remorse. Often the characters concerned are growing up or living in challenging circumstances, and need to be tough to survive. Gebbie uses language innovatively and with passion. This creative energy is what distinguishes her work from others'.
August 20, 2016
Beautifully written, but apart from the title story (my favourite) very sad.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews