Description
Lush Library Recommends: Anna James' Books for 2018
Variations and fugue on the theme of obsession
Vesna Main disturbs our self-image as educated, reasonable and ironic people who read modernist fiction. She disturbs us because we recognise ourselves in her obsessive and bloody-minded characters as they are pushed to the extreme. But they are only too human and seek love, just like us.
This is a collection of twenty short stories of different lengths and written in a variety of styles. Main writes about characters whose passion borders on obsession and who are seeking love and companionship but are doomed to remain alone, with their sense of personal failure as the only company.
About the Author
Vesna Main was born in Zagreb, Croatia. She studied comparative literature before obtaining a doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute in Birmingham. She has worked as a journalist, lecturer and teacher. Her previous work includes A Woman with No Clothes On (Delancey Press, 2008) and a collection of short stories, Temptation: A User's Guide (Salt 2018). Her stories have appeared in numerous journals, including Persimmon Tree, The Literateur and Storgy. One was selected for the Best British Short Stories 2017 (Salt, 2017). Her autofiction, Only A Lodger...And Hardly That, will be brought out by Seagull Books in 2019.
Reviews
In the opening pages of Vesna Main's short story collection we meet two women - both objects of the male gaze but under very different circumstances. The first story references EastEnders, the second the Salon des Refuses, challenging the reader's moral perception and demonstrating the nuances of consent. Themes like these emerge throughout the otherwise disconnected 20 stories in the Croatian author's collection. They are introduced with a quote by Alberto Manguel from his novel All Men Are Liars: "It is strange that no reader ever understood that my only subject is love." The desire to be loved runs throughout Temptation, but there are no happily-everafters here.
-- Antonia Charlesworth * Big Issue in the North *In these beautifully observed stories, Main deftly explores love's myriad forms.
-- Emily Rhodes * The Spectator *Lush Library Recommends: Anna James' Books for 2018 Another collection of short stories, this one from Croatian writer Main, these look at ideas of loneliness, passion and obsession and the sometimes grey areas between them. In these experimental stories of different lengths and styles, her characters include a prostitute turned murderer, a self-destructive book collection and a perfectionist dinner party hostess.
-- Anna JamesMain is excellent at building suspense, which is very difficult to achieve effectively in a short story. The successful development and maintenance of suspense is the difference between plucking delicately on a string to set up a subtle, subliminal vibration of psychological discomfort, rather than sawing on it to create a jarring noise which just irritates. Main is a writer who works subliminal for all it's worth.
-- Elaine Aldred * Strange Alliances *Main's stories are vivid, strange, thrillingly brief and filled with sex, violence and the banal horror of daily life. They are unusual tales filled with often unlikeable characters. Temptation is for you if you like witty, sharp dialogue, experimental modernist fiction and stories which speak to the darkest corner of ourselves.
-- Megan Kenny * Disclaimer Magazine *Book Information
ISBN 9781784631284
Author Vesna Main
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Salt Publishing
Publisher Salt Publishing
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 13mm
