Worlds from the word's end (vuoden 2017 painos)

Some of the stories I really like it. Some others they pass by without leaving me any feelings but instead quite empty... Is a short collection and it past fast, sadly as the book pass it fast probably my memory of the stories... I can just select a couple of them ( )

Sometimes you come across a book which nudges you out of your comfort zone, like an exotic literary dish which looks and tastes different, exciting and that wee bit dangerous. This slender collection of short (and some very short) stories had that effect on me.

This was the first time I read anything by Joanna Walsh and her style struck me for its whimsical invention and clever wordplay. The title piece – Worlds from the Word’s End – is a perfect example. It features a narrator who writes a final letter to an estranged partner in a world where words are no longer in use and language has become an old-fashioned means of communication only current amongst immigrants. It is a post-apocalyptic scenario with a metaphorical weirdness worthy of China Miéville. Yet the title also instantly reveals an author who delights in linguistic virtuosity and brilliant, startling puns. Much of the story in fact keeps up the title’s play on wor(l)ds, as in “We were always words apart”, “I’m dead to the word and you don’t have a care in it”, “Love’s a word that makes the word go round … I love you and I’m not aloud…”

A similar approach can be seen in “Bookselves”, which imagines a ghostly presence which inhabits our bookshelves and voraciously reads all the books we’ve left unopened or uncompleted: the relics of a more intense age of reading…washed up on a beech of elegant shelves. The imagery is fantastical, but the insight into common reading habits is all too real.

Some stories emphasize the surreal and border on the obscure – I’m still grappling with the opening story, “Two” whose meanings yet escape me. Other pieces include an Angela-Carteresque retelling of “Clever Hans”, now renamed Simple Hans and laced with blood and sex, and the one-pager “Exes” which is at once a reflection on kisses in text messages (x’s) and a bittersweet memoir of past relationships (“exes”).

Too clever by half? Yes, but only if you want to keep living in the same old words. ( )

Another exciting find thanks to a GOODREADS giveaway win. This was an interesting read. I think I spent more time immersed in her writing style and wordplay than actually comprehending her. ( )