Sudden Traveller

by Sarah Hall

*WINNER OF THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2020*

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE

A Guardian, Financial Times and Irish Times Book of the Year

'No one writes stories the way Hall does and quite possibly no one ever will. Astonishing, miraculous, a gift.' Daisy Johnson

'The queen of dark short fiction.' Guardian

'Astonishing, miraculous, a gift.' Daisy Johnson

'The best short story writer in Britain.' Spectator

In Turkish forests or rain-drenched Cumbrian villages, characters walk, drive, dream and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journey through life and death. Radical, charged with a transformative, elemental power, each of these stories invites us to stand at the very edge of our possible selves.

Includes the story 'The Grotesques', winner of the BBC Short Story Award, 2020.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism, Novels, Fantasy, British Literature

124 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2019

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sarah Hall took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew's University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.

Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).

Sarah Hall currently lives in North Carolina. Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).

The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.

Her latest novel is How to Paint a Dead Man (2009).

Reviews

[Sharlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We are, all of us, sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.”

Reviewing a collection of short stories isn’t an easy task. With a few exceptions, short story collections tend to feel like they need to be read over a longer time than it takes to read a book. For example, read one story, take a break and go read something else. Then come back to another story after that breather.

And in a collection such as this slim volume by Sarah Hall, a lot of breaks are needed, as the stories take on such varied settings, some weird and otherworldly and a bit experimental, some more rooted in the every day. Is that why the title is such? That as we read the stories, we are, too, “sudden travelers”, having to switch our perspectives completely?

For these stories are set in Turkish forests, Cumbrian villages, some that seem more like dreamscapes with weird transformations.

There is no doubt that Hall is a great writer. The stories are full of beautiful writing. For myself, as I am not much of a reader of more experimental turns, I was more drawn to her more ‘real’ stories like Orton and, especially the penultimate story, Sudden Traveler. And her writing pulled me in deep to those stories, tears falling, even, for one of them.

So while I stumbled during a couple of stories, unsure of where these pieces were leading me, the end result was worth it.

[Diana Iozzia · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Sudden Traveler”
Written by Sarah Hall
Reviewed by Diana Iozzia

“Sudden Traveler” is a collection of short stories, in the realistic fiction and the science fiction genres. Sarah Hall is an English writer, hailing from the area in England that my fiancé and I will be living. Sarah Hall has won quite a few awards and has been nominated for the Man Booker prize twice.

In this collection, there are seven different short stories. They are all a bit out there, but some of them are a bit enjoyable. For the most part, I unfortunately did not enjoy this short story collection. Hall chooses to create otherworldly and bizarre stories, with characters, scenery, and descriptions that are very well-written but confusing. Many of the stories included information that was not relevant to the plot but convenient to make the stories seem longer. Personally, I always prefer less filler and shorter stories. I feel that many of the stories in this collection just did not make enough sense to me. The premise on the back of the book helps me understand the stories more than reading the stories did.

I enjoyed the stories, “The Woman the Book Read”, “Who Pays Well?”, and “Orton”, but not as much as I have enjoyed other quirky and ethereal stories. I do not plan to continue reading this author’s books.

If you did or did not enjoy this book, I highly recommend some books that this reminded me of: “Visitations” by Lee Upton and “Her Body and Other Parties” by Carmen Maria Machado.

Thank you to William Morrow for sending along an advance review copy in exchange for reading and reviewing purposes.

[Bruna (bruandthebooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m an avid reader but it has never taken me so long to read such a small book. I gave it a second and third chance; I even tried starting all over. I was determined to get into this book but unfortunately it just wasn’t for me. The word that defines this book the most for me is: confusing.
This book has several small stories in which the author changes scenarios, characters, and transports us from one place to another out of nowhere - hence the name of the book, Sudden Traveler. There isn’t really a linear timeline and I got lost several times. To further confuse things, the characters’ lines aren’t in quotation marks. Maybe it would be an interesting book for those that enjoy poetry.
I kind of understand where the author was trying to get to but it was a confusing and circuitous path to get there.
Even so, I enjoyed her writing style in the parts that I could actually understand what was going on. Her style is descriptive and bold. There is a scene where one of the characters is in pain and you can really feel it. I appreciate that in a story, when you can feel what the author is trying to make you feel.
Overall, I did not enjoy the book and would not recommend it. My favorite part was probably the beautiful cover.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are several recurring themes in the seven stories that make up Sarah Hall’s latest short story collection. These include death whether natural or otherwise, female oppression and its consequences, migration, and loss, either of self or of others. Other than these shared themes though these stories are pretty diverse, some containing fantastical or folkloric elements, others simply stories of broken hearts and broken people. As such, your enjoyment will probably depend on your preference for these different kinds of writing but even then, there is something to admire in all of them.

The opening story M is a mind bending story to open with in its story of revenge and metamorphosis which is swiftly followed by the far more straight forward, but still emotive, The Woman the Book Read. Whereas the endings of the first two stories left me thinking and wanting to go back and reread with a different perspective, something I think is a positive of short stories, the ending of The Grotesques left me confused so in this sense didn’t succeed. Who Pays? is short and effective but perhaps too short but is followed by one of my favorite stories, Orton, featuring an older woman looking back and ruminating on the nature of death and the ‘brilliance of human invention’.

Sudden Traveler also very much features death with the narrator sitting in a car, nursing her baby thinking about the death of her mother. This one touched me the most as Hall really captures that feeling of grief and the aftermath of someone dying and had some beautiful lines. The collection ends with Live that you may live, again too short to make much of an impact, it felt more like a writerly indulgence in its imagined dreamscape although perhaps parents would get more out of it.

Overall, the best stories made up for the less so and I’m keen now to read Sarah Hall’s longer fiction to see if she as talented a writer as this collection seems to indicate.

Some favorite lines

‘She felt a bit of lovely pain, remembering. It never went away altogether, that kind of loss, but sat about you like weather, changing, getting up a gale from time to time.’ (Orton)

‘Nobody warned you about this part-suspension from the world. Waiting to rejoin. The baby is some kind of axis, a fixed point in time, though her grows every day, fingers lengthening, face passing through echoes of all your relatives, and the other relatives, heart chambers expanding, blood reproducing. It is like holding a star in your arms. All the moments of your life, all its meanings and dimensions, seem to lead to and from him.’ (Sudden Traveler)

‘Then you began to see they were, in fact, comforting her, better than you could. Dying: like having a wash, like stirring sugar into tea, or laying out cutlery. It was the first instructions of what would become a vital list of instructions, bringing the experience close, feeling its cool brush against your skin.’ (Sudden Traveler)

Time: the most unrelatable concept. If you stepped off this planet, you’d need no such identifier; everything would bend and fold, repeat, or just release. You’d have no age. You’d cease to be definite.’ (Sudden Traveler)

‘We are, all of us, sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.’ (Sudden Traveler)

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis

You get seven stories in 124 pages. The longest story runs to 28 pages and the shortest is 5 pages long. In the acknowledgements Hall says: To Mum, you are in every page” ; this following her mothers recent death. This is undoubtedly a collection that celebrates Hall’s mother

The seven stories:

M A woman sprouts wings. From Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra — 'I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find rosebowers too under my cypresses’ (7/8)
This is a powerful story but rather too similar to her award winning short story Mrs. Fox
The Woman The Book Read Set in Derya(Turkey). Travellers return to a holiday destination and memories return, coupled with mistaken identity
The Grotesques Dolly in Cambridge encounters Charlie-bo, the Clown
Who Pays? Dont muck around near a well. Its dangerous, especially around alcohol.
Orton In similar vein to story no.2. A return to a place in time that held special significance.
Sudden Traveller We are all sudden travellers in this world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing . There is a depth of emotion that comes from recent experience, and the heart.
Live That You May Live Birds again, this timew with children and in dreams

Questions/Quotations

Why is story no. 1 called “M”

Author background & Reviews
Sarah Hall is a renowned and prize winning exponent of short stories. She won the Edge Hill short story prize in 2011. At the start of her writing career she wrote longer novels and was nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize.

Recommend

Yes. As an occasional reader of short stories I felt a power and purpose that made this a worthwhile read.

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are seven short stories in this collection from 2019. The voices of the narrators stand out for me, the vivid pictures that are drawn and the language that is used. Not unusual words, but thought provoking ones, ones that can stop you in your tracks, unfamiliar in the sense of the way that they are used. It is not that they are words we don’t hear every day, but more that the way they are connected and woven together is different.
The very first paragraph of the first page describes the city at night. It is like a new Dylan Thomas describing the night for us in Under Milkwood. Listen:

A warm, damp, starless night in the city. The last night of summer. Darkness moves like an ocean above the roofs and streetlights. The wind is directionless, confusing the trees, loosening sidings and tiles. Creatures of flight have put themselves away, under the eaves, down chimneys; raptors are tucked behind bevelled glass spires. The windows of houses stand open, venting air, exhaust and the fume of falling leaves. The lungs of sleepers are evolving. It is the hour between prayers.

It is a beautiful start. You are drawn to the magic of it.
We travel widely in this collection, across a variety of settings. A holiday destination, perhaps a Greek island, the moors of northern England, a university town like Oxford, a forest somewhere in central or eastern Europe. None of these places are fixed or named, they merely hint at a location and allow our imaginations to do the rest. The author gives us enough, but not too much information.
My favourite story is called Orton. I love the way is captures nostalgia, but also for the way it looks back at a singular event, something that the narrator has held onto for the whole of her life, kept secret and held close. An elderly lady has been fitted with a device that keeps her heart working. I won’t call it a pacemaker, because this device has a code, a way to turn it off by making a phone call and requesting the manual override. The ability to choose an ending. The lady takes three rural busses to arrive at the moorland village of Orton. She has not come to say long because “She hasn’t any bags, just her favourite purse,”

A controlled environment is best for any reprogramming you may wish to consider.
Yes
She did understand. The off switch was hers.

It is fifty-four years since she met a young man for an afternoon in Orton. He is dead now, just like her husband Ken. Suddenly we get this confession:

Ken would have been hurt to know she’d chosen to come here, instead of staying at home. Poor Ken. But the marriage had been mostly happy, a few years of low-grade depression and arguing after the baby, normal tensions really, but good on the whole, even if it was not what she’d expected. They’d felt comfortable with each other, which was what counted in the end, probably. He’d been a nice lover; he got very hot when they made love, dripped sweat on her. He didn’t take it personally if she couldn’t finish. They’d done it into their sixties – a lot of their friends hadn’t. When they’d handed him Mia, while they were stitching her, he’d cried and said, Oh my little one, oh poppet. He’d never forgotten birthdays. And he’d been there, kneeling on the kitchen floor with her, when the first palpitations hit. How could Orton match all that? he’d have asked her.
But Ken was gone. Mia was in South Africa and seemed settled. She was tired.

She remembers an afternoon on the moors with a young man.

It was as if he, and she, knew the purpose of it all, and there had never been anything as honest or as free as that commitment, not in all the years of love and the practices of marriage, the planning of children, the bonds favoured by people.

The title story is about the death of a mother. Her daughter has just had a child of her own and is struggling with those early days and weeks of motherhood, while her own mother is slipping away. They don’t live close and her father summons her home when the time is close. The weather has been terrible, rain and flooding, and digging the grave is in doubt in the sodden ground. Among all the details of funerals and who will carry the coffin, there was a passage about the olf grave digger which I loved for its last line:

The grave digger, a man in his seventies who calls himself ‘Fosser’, after his Roman predecessors, will do something he has not done for years, possibly since he was an apprentice: he will build temporary wooden struts to keep the sodden walls of the grave from falling. And, listen, if you really need a sign, now, that something better is coming, that you will survive, that you will one day travel through kinder times, here it is. When Fosser arrives, he will climb out of the cab and he will stand looking out at the valley’s expanse of water for a moment; he will come over to the car and knock on the window, which you will pull down, and he will say one word to you: Bosphorus. Later, you will remember this. You will remember it while standing on board a ship, holding the rail, rain hammering the surface of the strait, domes and minarets and towers rising out of the mist, calls of gulls, and a man’s face turned towards you, his heat against your chest as you make the crossing, not really from west to east, or east to west, but from suffering to happiness. Coincidence? Fate? Just Fosser mentioning his last holiday, perhaps. These labourers of the other realms, of portals, these keepers of the beyond – can they predict, can they see what you cannot?

The last two stories in the book have mother/daughter themes, and so the cover illustration for the hardback edition, a painting called Mother and Daughter by Egon Schiele from 1913, is a perfect illustration when so many of these wonderful stories concern relationships and families. There is lots of work by Sarah Hall to discover. I hope they are all as good as this.

[Geertje · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language was lovely and yet none of these stories are very memorable to me. In fact, I've a hard time remembering them already.

[Tomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luin helmikuussa Sarah Hallin The Beautiful Indifference -novellikokoelman ja ihastuin kirjailijaan ja samalla vähän myös novelliin ja novellikokoelmaan kirjallisuuden lajina. Tällaista kokoelmaa lukemaan lähtiessä aina vähän pelottaa, että mitä jos taso onkin ailahteleva, mitä jos mukana onkin huonojakin juttuja. Tai mitä jos tunnelma novellista toiseen heittelee liikaa, mitä jos tekstit puuroutuvat keskenään?

Siksi hyvät novellikokoelmat eivät ole pelkästään yksittäisen tekstin tasolla hyviä, vaan myös kokonaisuutena mietittyjä ja eheitä. The Beautiful Indifference oli nimenomaan kokonaisuutena erinomainen, joten en hirveästi epäröinyt kun ostin Hallin uusimman kokoelman ja luin sen melkeinpä heti, kun sen käsiini sain. Enkä joutunut pettymään.

Sarah Hall on varmaan siksi niin erinomainen novellien kirjoittaja, että hänellä on sekä vahva tyyli (tunnistettava, mutta tarinakohtaisesti vaihteleva), että erinomainen kyky luoda tunnelmaa. Sudden Travellerin seitsemässä tarinassa hypitään erilaisiin elämäntilanteisiin ja maailmoihin, mutta aina mukana on jotain vähän mystistä, salattua, henkilöhahmoilta piiloon jäävää... Tarinoiden rakenne ja kieli tukee tätä salaisuusmaisuutta, Hall kietoo tarinansa auki hitaasti, lukijaa liikoja kädestä pitelemättä.

Kokoelman tunnelma on melkein surullinen, mutta samalla surun hyväksyvä. Hall tarkastelee tarinoissaan elämän tummia sävyjä (kuolemaa, mutta myös muunlaisia elämän ja ihmisten menettämisen tapoja) ja näkee myös niissä elämän kauneuden. Melankolista, mutta silleen hyvällä?

Ihan se viimeinen niitti jäi minulle puuttumaan - ehkä siksi että kokoelman viimeinen tarina taisi lentää pääni yli tai ohi - mutta todella vahva novellikokoelma on tämäkin. Vahvasti "tämä täytyy lukea lähitulevaisuudessa uudelleen"-listalle.

[Renee Godding · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We are, all of us, sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold."

I have such mixed feelings about this collection... Some stories were uncomfortable to read, some were too "edgy-literary" for my taste, but some were brilliant.
The titular story was a clear standout for me, as was the final story Live That You May Live. Some were a bit on the nose with their symbolism (M and Orton), and others left me puzzled as to how to interpret them (Grotesque and Who Pays).
Overall, a mixed bag from a clearly talented author. I see the same elements that I loved in Burntcoat here, as well as some of the things that made me uncomfortable reading that book...

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine collection of short stories. They just keep rolling out.

[Joelle Egan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sudden Traveler is a collection of seven short stories by award-winning Sarah Hall, whose short fiction has been justly described as luminous and erotic. This small sampler demonstrates her flexibility with styles and subjects that vary from the deeply moving and accessible to the more obscure and elusive. Interwoven in each piece is a recurrent theme of women’s experience in snapshots of important stages of life, both as it is perceived by the women themselves and by men who can only guess about them from a remove. Some of the stories feature fantastical elements with prose that is heavily metaphoric and lyrical. Others are more realistically grounded and are thereby starker in their depictions of violence and physical frailty. As with all collections, some of the stories are stronger than others, and a few cross the border into pretentiousness with Hall’s sometimes excessive use of perplexing symbolism. Still, Sarah Hall is obviously a wonderful and creative writer with a strong message and the skill with which to convey her point of view. Sudden Traveler is a nice short introduction to her work and will encourage an open-minded reader to seek out her other offerings.

Thanks to the author, Custom House/William Morrow, and Library Thing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hall can definitely turn a phrase. Generally, I think they were good stories, they didn't just quite grab me. They may well someone else, as I said they are good. Favorite was probably the titular story.

[Peter Mathews · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few years ago I read Sarah Hall's The Electric Michelangelo (2004), her second novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was an immense disappointment, full of amateurish choices and lacking in a genuine sense of narrative direction.

Because it is a collection of short stories, Hall's latest book obviously cannot be judged by the same criteria as a novel. There are, however, some positive signs: Hall's writing style has evolved, for instance, with a new, punchier style that suits her often dreamlike prose. It's certainly a decorative approach, but throughout the book, I kept hoping for something of greater substance.

1. M

M tells the story of an aging Russian lawyer who spends a lot of time lying in bed in pain. She is in a fairly new relationship with a man, Ilias, who seems quite a good match. The lawyer takes on a pro bono case defending the Haven, a shelter for women, which is going to be redeveloped by the city's real estate tycoon. The lawyer abruptly alienates herself from everyone in her life, including Ilias. Hall reveals that the pains the protagonist has been experiencing are from her new wings, implying that she has been transformed into a kind of giant eagle or raptor that bears down relief and revenge on the city as a result of the closure of the Haven.

2. The Woman the Book Read

In the Turkish town of Izmir, a man waits for his business partner, Eymen. He notices one woman calling to another, and realizes that he is looking at Ara, the daughter of a woman (Catherine) he once loved. Abandoning Eymen, the protagonist follows Ara, spying on her and meditating on the distance of time and space that has separated them.

3. The Grotesques

It is Dilly's (Delia's) birthday, and she has gone to the store to buy jam and cream for the scones her mother is making. On her way home, she sees that the local Oxford students have played a prank on a local drunk, Charlie-bo, covering his face with pieces of fruit. She tries to help him, but he frightens her instead. As Dilly returns home, we are given glimpses into some of the family secrets. Hall also gradually reveals that Dilly is turning thirty, even though she seems like a child for much of the story. At the story's end, it is revealed that the police have found a body, and Dilly imagines the police removing the fruit from the corpse to reveal, not Charlie-bo's face, but her own.

4. Who Pays?

Deep in a Turkish forest there is a mysterious well, where men and women gather (separately) to enact ancient rituals. On this occasion, the men lower their beer into the well to keep it cold. When one of the men climbs down to retrieve it, he never returns - presumably, he has been sacrificed to the well.

5. Orton

An old woman, Mrs. Lydford, has a bad heart that depends on a pacemaker to keep going. Her daughter Mia has moved to South Africa, and her husband, Kenneth, has died. As such, she decides to end her own life by turning off the pacemaker. The place she chooses for her death is Orton, in the north of England, a place that lingers in her memory because it was the scene of a fleeting but memorable sexual encounter.

6. Sudden Traveler

A woman meditates on the fact that she is caught between her dying mother and her dependent child. "We are, all of us, sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold."

7. Live That You May Live

A mother is woken by her young daughter, who believes that there is a bird in her bed. The mother reassures the daughter. Nonetheless, life and experience are depicted as a giant bird that sweeps the daughter up and carries her into the twists and turns of her future life.

With these stories, Hall tends to fall into one of two traps as a writer.

The first trap, for which I heavily criticized The Electric Michelangelo, is the over-investment in punch-you-in-the-face obvious metaphors that are simply dropped into the lap of the reader rather than examined and nuanced by our writer-guide. This is particularly true of a story like "Orton," for instance - who would have thought that a weak heart, lacking in autonomy, could be a metaphor for an emotional failure? It is a literary cliche that requires Hall to breathe new life into it in order to justify its resurrection here. The same goes for the symbol of the well in "Who Pays?" and the baby/dying mother duo in the title story.

The second trap is the random sketch that generates empathy without any apparent purpose. "The Woman the Book Read" is a perfect example of this kind of literary navel-gazing. Yes, there is a poignant sense of time having been lost, but given the brevity of our sojourn with this main character, this sensation feels as moodily inconsequential as reading the name on a stranger's grave.

What Hall seems to do best is a kind of prose poetry, visible in the first and last stories in the collection, which veer off into dreamlike, lyric flights of ideas and images. Yet even this apparent strength is wasted, mostly because Hall is writing fiction and not poetry - such oneiric prose requires immense discipline (think Lautreamont's Maldoror and Poems) in order to succeed.

The story I enjoyed most in this collection was "The Grotesques," a problematic but partially redeeming story that, while a failure because Hall refuses to give her story a clear focus, at the very least tried to *play* with the idea of the grotesque instead of forcing the symbolism to do all the work. If only Hall would go more in this direction, toying with ideas while developing a consistent narrative that I can invest in, I could get behind her literary work. Right now, though, it all seems too decorative and inconsequential.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Dilly sometimes thought that Mummy was like a truffle pig, rooting around and unearthing ugly, tangled thoughts in people.'
(From 'The Grotesques' )

I found this collection of short stories stirring, surprising, edged with beautiful prose, full of shades and big stirs of whimsy and filled with longing.

'So it goes. People as fundamental as the sky, gone before they can be shared by future generations. '
(From 'Sudden Traveller')

'But I made her, in a womb once cut apart, stoned, and sewed. Cells, and strings and hope. I made her bed - eight bolts, twelve screws, five panels of false mahogany - foolproof for skill less artisans, unbreakable when she jumps.'
(From 'Live That You May Live')

[JacquiWine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of short stories from one of our most highly-regarded practitioners of the form. Here are tales of family ties, sex, vengeance, mortality, grief and loss, all conveyed in Hall’s characteristically lyrical prose.

To read my review, please visit:

https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...

[MargaretDH · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim volume of short stories packs a punch. I've enjoyed a lot of Hall's other works, and this was probably the weirdest thing I've read of hers. There's a lot of exploration here, and if you like short story collections that take you through a range of themes, forms and isn't afraid to stray into the speculative and magical, you should pick this one up.

[Virginia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the usual up-and-down short story experience, and the downs were immediately forgettable. I enjoyed only one story, "Orton", in which an elderly woman makes some decisions on a bus outing. 2 1/2 stars

[Mick · Rating 3 out of 5]

De helft van de tijd had ik geen idee wtf er allemaal gebeurde maar twee van de verhalen waren heel mooi

[Aisling · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ in general but ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for the very last story which is beautiful and amazing.

[Isabel]

An uncomfortable book to read but full of potent insight.

[Have Coffee Need Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this ARC from TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.

Sudden Traveler is a beautiful collection of short stories interwoven by the delicately threaded narrative that speaks the language of feminine identity. Each story is an exploration of the essence of female embodiment. Not focusing on sex as gender but rather the classification, agency, violation, sorority, disambiguate, and celebration of what makes a being a woman.

These short stories range in tone by the narrator of each tale. Written in a way that a mother might tell her daughter or a sister to her own; every story is told as one would hear them mouth to ear. Spoken. Some of the voices are broken and distant as they describe the defilement of their innocence. Other voices burn with fervor as the woman is forged into a weapon of her defense. And some are the soft murmurs of affection, if not acceptance.

‘The greatest betrayal of all is to disaffiliate.'

Hall has created a council and sisterhood in Sudden Traveler. Sometimes we are crushed beneath the boot of the world we are born to and the only saving grace is knowing that those who were walked on before us know the way to survive. In these lovely accounts, one woman might learn the lesson but she is a symbol for each of us, and each of these women's suffering and joys are that of all women. This collection highlights the fact that we women don't keep our secrets to save ourselves, we share them to save others.

‘...I am not this; she could tell him everything, or nothing because the present is in each millionth moment remade and unstoppable, forgiveness, war, cause, cure, all moments, all selves, possible.'

Each of these anecdotes is uniquely random but universal. As a female reader, I can sense that these characters are people I have known or who I could understand becoming. Sometimes I am the voyeur of the life I might once have lead. While other times I am so deeply sunken into the bland anonymity of rote motion that I become a victim of my own sense of contentment. I could easily be or become an Ara or a Dilly.

‘We are all sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.'

This book is beautiful. I highly recommend it. If you enjoy these stories I suggest you also check out Anatomy by Simon Travers; it is a collection of stories and poems expressing the beauty of unflinching intimacy.

Anatomy

[Audra (ouija.reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a strange, wonderful, unclassifiable set of stories! Sarah Hall has captivated me with her unusual worlds and I only found myself wishing the collection, only seven stories at 128 pages, was longer!

Hall has a fluid, wandering style of writing that immediately creates an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue around her work. The stories are on the quieter side; not a lot always happens in each story, but each still had the effect of leaving me wondering and wanting more—just like good stories should.

I love especially how these stories look at and comment on women, femininity, perceived gender roles, and the male gaze. Hall has an astute eye for political and social commentary even as she shrouds her message in shades of genre fiction.

Dark and wonderful, thought-provoking and entertaining.

I'll definitely be looking for the rest of Hall's work to supplement this small snack of writing.

My thanks to Custom House/HarperCollins for my copy of this one to read and review.

[Aurora Matthews · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the writing in this collection to be OVERLY creative, to the point where I often had a hard time following. There were one or two short stories in which I was able to keep up for the most part, but not all the way through. Just when I thought I was getting it the author would revert back to her confusing way of writing and I would revert back to being utterly lost. Too lyrical for my taste.

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories that I respected but did not necessarily enjoy. There were some interesting passages about the nature of storytelling and women's experiences. The relationship between Dilly, her family and food in one of the stories, The Grotesques, was especially intriguing. The characters, however, seemed to be subsumed by the dreamlike writing style and folkloric motifs. The nature of the storytelling seemed to overwhelm the stories themselves.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

All of these stories are odd and depressing, with the exception of Live That You May Live which is the only one I enjoyed. What they're about isn't entirely obvious, I'm still not sure if I even know what most were even about. Sarah Hall has a unique writing style, unfortunately it was a bit too unique for me.

[RL · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Stunning prose(-poetry), I read this collection because I came across Hall's short story 'The Grotesques' elsewhere and it appears in this collection.
While all the stories are beautifully written and dwell on death and the passage of time, many felt inconsequential and really didn't make much of an impression on me.

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stylized stories that are often thick with symbolism. The title story is probably the best. Unfortunately the narrative interest in most of the stories is only fleeting. This was disappointing since I really fell into the story Sarah Hall built for "The Electric Michelangelo"

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the folktale elements to the stories and appreciated the experimental elements of the book but unfortunately I can't say that I loved it.

[Max Griffiths · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarah Hall writes with a unique style. At times it is intriguing and beautiful but it doesn't always flow in a natural way and it can be hard to know where the story is going. Glimpses of beauty.

[Laura Hart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quick read, mostly skimmed. Beautiful language but too slippery for me to hold onto.