Motion Sickness

by Lynne Tillman

Book by Tillman, Lynne

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, Womens, American

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Here’s an Author’s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.

My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.

Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.

I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.

As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.

When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.

Reviews

[Barry Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

the OG "hot girl just vibes" book.

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv)]

Still thinking of this cover … need her framed and immortalized as part of my personality.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a long time fan of Tillman (ever since a lit professor had me read Haunted Houses some 25+ years ago), I've been slowly working my way through her catalog. Her writing is always full of wry observations centered on human behavior and personality coupled with insightful perspectives on art/culture. Here we find the narrator sort of galavanting about the world yet running into many of the same fellow travelers and forced to create temporary/traveler identities of her own along the way.

"Maybe I’m as trapped as Pete. Although I may be in a melodrama, not a tragedy, white middle-class young woman, from yet another dying empire, who dreams that change is possible but will remain unaware always of her fate, because she believes there is no fate, no history she can be tied to, so that her destiny will hinge on the shifts around her that she will call lucky or unlucky, personal triumph or defeat. National identity is like armor. On permanent loan from a museum."

Travel provides a kind of freedom from self as our main character points out the freedom of not ever being expected to fit in when you are the foreigner. There is a wonderful kind of internal monologue throughout this book that works through unexpected tangents. Tillman captures a kind of restlessness as scenes and characters fade in and out. The American condition "cast in doubt." Far from my favorite Tillman, but a solid read overall.

[Cordelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just an American girl having her hot girl euro summer

[Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

Barely any plot, mostly just vibes

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A plotless book about the people you meet but that was exactly what I was looking for.

[Nyah Dalrymple]

3 stars is probably too generous bc this wasn’t badly written there was just no real plot or character development whatsoever. It’s basically about an American woman as she goes around various European cities and keeps bumping into people she knows. It had some vague musings on the concept of national identity and whether a person can take on a different identity than the nation they were born in.

[Lucy Wragg · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’m a sucker for a book where nothing happens in Europe and there’s lot of art history references. the main character didn’t feel hugely developed, we know barely anything about her and tbh ive just finished and i can’t even remember her name lol. but very easy to read, read most of it in one sitting in the sun in england, would have devoured it much faster on holiday i think. very nice, but not hugely memorable

[Krystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read this book in every café, bar, plane, train, bus, that I’ve taken in Edinburgh, Manchester, and (now) in Valletta. It has been my best friend, my compass, my ally throughout every moment of beauty, discomfort, and elation that I’ve been on this journey as a woman traveling alone in Europe. Finished one month to the day I began it. The pages are covered in makeup, spilled drinks, postcards as bookmarks, train tickets, and tears. It’s a memento I’ll carry with me forever.

[Bente Heijmink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not gonna lie, I only bought this book for its cover. I then found out it's a classic no plot, just vibes. I love this genre so I had a great time reading Motion Sickness. Nothing life changing but a fun read!

[Lulufrances · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our main girl is a strong no plot just vibes late 80s/early 90s euro-summer drifter with the need to write postcards that get ripped up. Does she end up sending any, we ask?
Some great musings in here, random, quirky, nostalgic, unusual and you need to be in the right mood for sure.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know why I needed the push to finally read Tillman but after hearing her talk at an event for her book/interview I was taken by her. But I don’t know why it was as if she had to prove herself to me first. Maybe because she has been described as a “cult” author. And somehow that moniker paired with any contemporary figure has begun to more frequently mean that they just aren’t very good. Or at least reading them may take some difficulty, or leave some to be desired, but it's permissible for the fringe merit it possesses.

Tillman has the voice and brevity that I admire from authors like Jean Rhys and Helene Cixous. The Rhys comparison isn't revolutionary, as the plot follows any classic Rhys and Tillman mentions her a few times. But I kept thinking our narrator was as if a Rhys heroine happened to let the reader into her inner world just a little more.
This sort of word association stream of consciousness can be difficult to stay with, but Tillman takes it a step past it's Sartraian origins, making every sentence like a poem that has been a little mangled by life.

Also, the postscript is an excellent way to end a book like this.

In Thailand the ad "Come alive-you're in the Pepsi generation" was translated into their language. It became, "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead." The Pepsi generation isn't haunted and hears no echoes from dead relatives. I can make myself live again, be more lively, come alive and that doesn't depend on anyone. But if I need to come alive it means I am dead, not my ancestors. And when you don't know your ancestors, when your family begins at the borders of a new world, there's no fear of being haunted. There's no one to do the haunting. Even if those spirits wanted to, they couldn't find their way. . .
John is drunk, his long gaunt face white and red simultaneously. He's had a letter from home. From his wife, from whom hes separated. I won't ask him what she's said but he's mumbling about honor and Antigone burying the dead, and I sense he's the unburied dead. We don't for reasons like these, and others, share a room. Mine is right above his and all night long I hear strange noises. A dog howling, a child whimpering, a man tearing paper or ripping his clothes, a sign of mourning. We haven't slept together since the first time, which was a small and sincere disaster, because he was drunk, he said. We're just companions, romantic companions. Home is far away except when it flies in, airmail, with familiar handwriting on white or tan envelopes. Relics of the near past. There's no place like home. There's no home like the present.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A great postindustrial capitalist ennui envelops me and sweeps away the vestiges of involvement. Leaves me passionless and dissatisfied and incapable of movement."

Motion Sickness is a story told through vignettes of travel and transient relationships. I can't say I've enjoyed a travel-themed book more than this one. Lynne Tillman shares acute observations about food, conversations, and various lovers in a voice I find endlessly quotable. It's a quick read but I lingered for a lot longer than usual because I was savouring all the ennui.

[Pree · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another reviewer said “no plot just vibes” and I agree. The writing style wasn’t for me.

I see the intention, and I liked the concept of the book - follows almost stream of consciousness of young/middle aged woman thinking deep thoughts and acting on spontaneous desires in different cities in the world. She meets and connects with friends and lovers all over, and they make her think of different things.

What was frustrating was that I was waiting for a point, a red line that would connect the people or stories. But at the end I was left wondering what’s the point?? Still don’t get it. Anyway, not great but alas what to do.

[Ellie Breen · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’m not sure if it’s because my weekend has felt like a fever dream of relentless eating, sleeping, and feeling unwell but reading this felt heavy. like the words were on top of my head pushing me down. but i don’t know if that is how lynne writes as i have never read her before, it was beautiful prose & transcended me around the globe through the eyes of a depressed, but well-read woman. but i couldn’t help feeling sick myself whilst reading motion sickness.

[Kurt Gottschalk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this while traveling which is the way to do it. Tillman does a fantastic job of capturing the feelings of detachment and allure that come with wandering in foreign lands. There's not really a plot. There's a heroine who, while likeable, isn't especially notable. And there's a sense of presence that is palpable. I gave it to an American friend crossing paths in the same land. Very enjoyable.

[Kiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

No plot just vibes

[Faith Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

To begin im kind of annoyed because as I did updates for this book I wrote down notes with my favourite quotes from each section and now all of my progress notes have disappeared…

This is my third book I’ve read by Tillman and I think it’s really a blessing when you find an author who you feel such a draw to that you want to seek out and buy all of their work thats available to you and that’s exactly how I feel about Lynne Tillman. I don’t really know how to explain why I love her work so much - the last time I studied English Literature was when I was 15 - but I do read a lot and I read a lot of varied work so I feel like I do have a good grasp on what constitutes for good work, in my opinion anyways. I think the last time I’ve been this into a specific author was probably Mieko Kawakami, and I only say that in last tense because I’m just waiting for more of her work to be translated into English and sold in the west, but apart from both being women, writing about women there’s nothing that draws similarities between the two authors works.

Motion Sickness is an interesting title for a book that feels unusually calm for the majority of it, not calm in its events or the people who we meet, but instead because of the first person perspective we are reading it through. The main character floats about through a vast number of cities and countries with no real focus or aim, she meets new people and connects with them briefly, hearing their experiences and traumas, interested in these dramatic and often devastating lives, lived in decades and countries smd political climates she cannot relate to. But we never really get much of her, the main character, much of who she is, what her motivations are, what she wants, and when tiny snippets of these questions are revealed the reader feels like maybe we are breaking through! Maybe we are connecting with her! But alas, much like the people she meets in the novel we are soon left behind, a postcard torn up just as we feel an ounce emotional connection from her.

We know she struggles, shes lost her father and her best friend both through separate but equally devastating circumstances. But even these events are brushed over, she even says she feels guilty bringing up her fathers death out of fear shes making other people uncomfortable or drawing the conversation into a place she doesn’t want it to go. Perhaps this is why books, film and music are such a huge part of the novel, the mc often relating people and events to things shes seen or read, or hiding away back to her dingy hotels alone to read when things get tough or awkward with lovers or friends, or discussing and arguing media with obnoxious English brothers, or going to the cinema to see an Agnes Varda film whilst in France helping an old woman write her memoirs.

'If there isn't a word for guilt, movies or sex in some culture, could I really exist there?'

I have so much more to say about this book to be honest, much like all of my reviews on here they tend to turn into analysis or commentary. But death seems like a running theme in motion sickness, something that the main character feels that she can run away from, by leaving America where her father and friend died, she has escaped it. But it always follows, constant reminders of the tragedy and cycle of death and birth follow her, and so she is constantly moving until it reaches a climax when she discovers a man she met a few countries ago was murdered, from this point it feels we are going in slow motion it all seems to come back to her friend who has just given birth or her friend who was murdered. I’m not sure what any of this means I just started writing and didnt stop, maybe I’m wrong or misinterpreting but who cares I loved it anyways.

‘It's funny about longing. Or how longing and horror sometimes meet inside oneself, in a private Dracula. Vampirish need. When longing's absent, when I feel no specific desire for anything, anything I can name, I vacillate, feel determined, content or empty. With it inside me, a clenched baby's fist below my heart, probably in the neighborhood of the solar plexus, uneasiness surges through my body and I'm not sure where to look, what to eat, what to do.’

[RonnieRae · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book reminiscent of diary entries and Coco Mellor, this is perfect for those looking for something quick to read but dense in material.
Structured like strewn about diary entries, this book mainly follows the main speaker as she navigates time abroad, far from America and finding herself in often strange situations that certainly feel like traveling at random abroad. She often gets into complex relationships that come and go as quickly as she changes notes, all of them punctuated by her various thoughts on the matter and a sort of stream of consciousness writing.
Something that makes this book so enjoyable (at least to an English major and media lover such as myself) is the constant references to various movies, books, musicals, and other media. Oftentimes, this in books can feel either random, misunderstanding, or even pretentious, but the way it’s done in this book feels like a language. It adds a new layer to the book that could be missed by readers, however, while it rewards those readers who do indeed understand the various references, it doesn’t penalize those who don’t. That frequency of reference also forms the fascinating main character, who speaks in references and understands her day to day life in how it relates to the media she has consumed herself. To me, it’s something rarely seen in books, and I truly wish it was done more as that’s exactly how I often navigate the world. It’s a fun character trait and style that is rare in books and yet, I feel not so rare in our own world.
In truth, I picked this book up while I was abroad as the beautiful U.K. cover caught my eye and the fact that it was only five pounds enticed me to at least try it with little stakes if I didn’t like it. I didn’t start reading till I got home, mainly picking it up out of my never ending stack of books I still need to read simply because I hoped it would take me back to my time abroad. It certainly did, almost in a way that felt uncannily similar to my own experience. The constant influx of strangers who become less than friends but no longer unknown, the need for familiarity but the craving for something new, the endless possibilities of something that could be permanent and the lack of attachment due to be away from “home” that instead makes each interaction heightened and somehow special. That is this book, captured in the speakers experiences and expressed thoughts.
Basically, this is a beautifully real feeling book that presents itself in an almost whirlwind type manner as she attempts to navigate isolation, and new experiences, all of which that, with her quippy comments, feel almost far more interesting than perhaps they should be.
To me, this book is the perfect ode to traveling or finding a new home and personhood within you while abroad. If you’re missing your home away from home, the person you became while so far from normalcy and familiarity, and the life you may have begun carving there, then I highly suggest picking up this book and attempting to extend those feelings.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing (and I’d argue, really only downside to this book besides it not fitting everyone’s personal taste) is the ending. It merely… ends. Almost as if it’s in the middle of the book. I almost wish it had chosen several other places to choose its ending. Especially considering that there is no perfect linear progression in this novel, it wouldn’t exactly be challenging to do so. Perhaps this is on purpose, to truly set the book as purely a woman recounting her journeys, but even if that were the case, I could see so many other sentences or paragraphs summarizing and driving home the many themes, thoughts, happenings, and tones of this book much more successfully than the current ending.

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5!!
I originally DNF’d this when I first bought it two years ago and it sat on my shelf after that. But in an effort to read the books already on my shelf lately I picked it back up and fell in love of the stories and adventures of the narrator.
Mainly what appeals most to me is the authenticity in the anecdotes for each character met long the travels- each offering a different world view and their own quirks. It was relatable as a young woman who solo travels as I also often meet characters of all sorts and they all leave an impression on me whether we were together 24 hours or 24 days.
Maybe I’ll decide to start writing my recollections of the people I meet while traveling.
…

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed this book, but I also think I missed out on things. On the one hand, I loved the energy of the narrator and how she pulled you this way and that across her European adventures. On the other hand, it seems her mind works similarly to mine and this caused friction during the reading process; like I was caught up in my own thoughts instead of hers. It’s a messy book with messy characters and that’s quite cool. It feels timeless and placeless but also very rooted, I think overall it just sat well with me even if I struggled at times to see the point.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

exactly my kind of book

[Ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nej men alltså jag orkar bara inte läsa klart. Outline del 2. Behöver se över mina läsvanor

[Ami Boughter · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some days pass like dreams, though one can imagine that they really did happen. One day my money will run out, there won't be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the beast will not have turned into a prince, and Prince Charming will not have broken the spell. My mother writes in her last letter, Someday you'll have to face the music."

[Frieda · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. At first I loved it and felt like it was somehow magically paralleling my life. It felt free from a heavy mechanical plot which I appreciated. But as I read on I found the stream of consciousness style began to be a little repetitive and sometimes a tad pretentious. Regardless I still enjoyed this book a lot and recommend reading it if you too are travelling as I was.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Loved this - great holiday read. Not sure I would have enjoyed so much if reading during my commute etc.

A beautiful novel about a woman travelling in the 90s, her thoughts, her dreams, the art she sees, books she reads, chance encounters and coincidences. Made me want to travel solo and start writing postcards to everyone.

[Garrie Fletcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm, not as good as her other books. I gave up half way through when the reading became a slog and not a joy.

Great descriptions and flashes of humour but everything is so transient that I felt my concentration slipping away.

[the ducks of absalom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like a dumbed down Ali Smith. It’s heartening to know that artists can grow from being this puerile and craft the perfection of something like American Genius. There’s nope for even the autofiction autocracy.

[Nicole Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘voluntary and individual diaspora is a luxury’

[LindeFee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 !!!!