She recently gave a reading at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, as reported at The Scotsman:
Janice Galloway also treated us to a piece of new writing, part of an as-yet-unnamed project known only as "the thing" - though she did go as far as to say that it might become a "novelistic memoir". The section she read was about birth - her own, as told to her by her mother, continuing what she described as a "a pleasingly reproductive theme" for the event.
As well as reading about Clara Schumann's first pregnancy, from her award-winning novel Clara, she read part of a short story published in The Scotsman Orange Short Story Award collection Work, about a young Italian boy in the heyday of light opera, tricked into the operation which will make him a castrato, able to sing all his life with an unbroken voice.
Her moving, visceral prose proved that good writing reflects ideas and emotions powerfully into our own time, even when it talks about distant times and places.
I am terribly ashamed of the fact that I did not make it through Clara; in my defense I can only say it came out in that dark time between pre-this-blog and post-the-shadow-of-college when I wasn't reading as much as I should have been, and slowish thought-provoking literary novels weren't exactly what I was reaching for when I did make my way into the bookstore. Corrective measures have been taken. (Well, I've moved it back to the TBR pile, at least.)
By the way, word of warning: skip Trick if you have even a single emotional bone in your body. The book will pull that bone out of you and beat you in the face with it. Potent text.
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