What's It Like Out?

by Penelope Gilliatt

Book by PENELOPE GILLIATT

Genres: Short Stories

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Brilliant English short story writer, novelist, critic and screenwriter, Penelope Gilliatt came to represent some of the best of the second generation writing at the New Yorker magazine.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of nine short stories written in the mid-1960s when Gilliatt was married to the playwright John Osborne. Gilliatt also wrote a few novels. Interestingly, one of them was about London during a pandemic. The stories were originally published in the New Yorker magazine. Gilliat picks up on the odd and unusual and has a good eye for dialogue. The characters are portrayed warts and all and often communication and connection are the key and character is crucial.
Gilliatt is also very good with one liners. An older couple who have ceased to speak to each other:
“No one understands loneliness if they haven’t been married,”
The Redhead covers a whole life and Harriet is the redhead of the title. She is very tall and does not look conventional and her mother doesn’t like her:
"Mrs. Buckingham's dislike gave Harriet a sort of bristling resilience. She had from the beginning an immunity to other people's opinion of her, which isn't a characteristic that is much liked in women."
And also when she was an orderly in the First World War:
“Boadicea with a bedpan”
A review in the New York Times noted:
“All the stories deal with separation and disintegration: marriages break up, partnerships split; people grow away from each other, even as they fear the pain of parting.”
On the whole the stories are enjoyable. There were some tropes which were too obvious and a few issues with language. The novel about the pandemic looks interesting, but only because we are in one!

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always on the lookout for new (to me) writers of short stories. I can't remember where I came across a recommendation for the work of Penelope Gilliatt, but I managed to track down a Virago edition of What's it Like Out? via Abebooks and have spent a couple of enjoyable if slightly bemused days reading the nine stories it contains. First published in 1968 and containing stories first published in The New Yorker during the mid sixties. It's a collection like no other I've read. Gilliatt has an eye for the eccentric (both character and situation), a psychologically astute intelligence, and a sideways approach to her subjects. The stand out story for me is The Redhead, which portrays a whole life in just fourteen pages; a remarkable illustration of what the best short stories can achieve.

[kp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gilliatt's stories are sometimes odd and always beautifully unresolved. My favorite line: "It strikes me often that Oedipus must have been the only child in history who ever really loved his mother."

[Benjamin Bellick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Portraits of the realest and most particular people you’ve never met.

(Extraordinary funny, too)

[Jaimie-Lee Xuereb · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

1989 notebook: 16 stories of the old order v. the new, young v. old, wife v. husband. Sharp and revealing. The journalist who interviews the old but bright couple about senility - they are way ahead of him, but show great kindness.