The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

The Trick is to Keep Breathing is another wonderfully titled book and thankfully the story’s good too.  It probably has about as much cohesive narrative structure as Autumn ofthe Patriarch, but I enjoyed reading it far more.  It’s a novel obsessed with finding ways to keep going when life goes wrong and depression hits and ultimately not coming up with very many answers that its protagonist finds useful.  The re-occurring problem of “what will I do while I’m lasting” never really finds a viable solution.

The book roughly tells the story of the ironically named Joy Stone who is in the midst of a breakdown following the sudden death of her boyfriend Michael.  This being a first person account of mental deterioration, it’s not told in a linear sense which allows Janice Galloway to blend together Joy’s relationships with men: at times it is impossible to discern who she is describing or if the events occurred before or after Michael’s death.  The death of Michael and that of Joy’s mother also become linked through this method, even though they seem to occur years apart and she is in a relationship with someone else when her mother dies.  The story of both lives and deaths are told throughout the novel in patchy flashbacks that never reveal the whole picture.

The bulk of the book is set in an institution and so I feel this overwhelming urge to compare the thing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, never mind that I must have been about 16 when I read that book and so my recollection of it is sketchy at best.  One thing the two definitely have in common is contempt for those running the place.  Granted, there’s no Nurse Ratched ruling Galloway’s novel with an iron fist, but Joy is scathing of the chain of unnamed doctors who run the place and are both unable and unwilling to agree on a treatment plan.  She is told numerous times that she is there by choice and she can choose how she gets better, but the doctors scoff at her suggestions largely without offering any of their own.  Obviously, this is all filtered through a super unreliable (and cynical) narrator but it’s not so far out there that it’s blatantly untrue.  At times Joy seems so reasonable, and then she mentions her refusal to eat and you’re reminded that she does need help.

As I said, I enjoyed reading this book, Joy is a clever and funny woman and I always enjoy reading about them.  I read her as being a feminist and so to me a lot of her comments on her personal body image could be taken as satire, if they were removed from their context.  She reads all sorts of women’s magazines and so a lot of the language that she uses when she talks about herself mirrors these.  The most obvious example is The Ultimate Diet; “eel the tension in your stomach even after the lightest meal as a warning.  Drink endlessly to bulk away the craving.  You know it’ll all be worth it in the end.”  With phrases like that it’s hard to tell whether to laugh or cry.

This is the kind of novel that makes me want to read more of the same author.  I love those kinds of books.  It’s especially rewarding as this is Galloway’s first novel and, despite this being her only entry on The List (yes, capitalisation necessary) debut novels are rarely an author’s best work.  Harper Lee’s a possible exception.  It’s exciting to discover someone new, especially as there are now even more authors that I love that I’m close to crossing of the list altogether. 

Next time: Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey.