“[Hall is] beloved by readers for her gorgeous lyricism and ability to delve into unexpected and illuminating tales of what it means to be human.” — Stylist (UK) Featuring her signature themes of identity, eroticism, and existential quest, the stories in Sarah Hall’s third collection travel far afield in location and ambition—from Turkish forest and coastline to the rain-drenched villages of … Turkish forest and coastline to the rain-drenched villages of Cumbria.
The characters in Sudden Traveler walk, drive, dream, and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journeys through life, death, and love. Science fiction meets folktale and philosophy meets mortality.
A woman with a new generation of pacemaker chooses to shut it down in the Lakeland, the site of her strongest memories. A man repatriated in the near east hears the name of an old love called and must unpack history’s dark suitcase. From the new world-waves of female anger and resistance, a mythical creature evolves. And in the woods on the border between warring countries, an old well facilitates a dictator’s downfall, before he gains power.
A master of short fiction, Sarah Hall opens channels in the human mind and spirit and takes us to the very edge of our possible selves.
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Sudden Traveler is a collection of seven short stories by award-winning Sarah Hall, whose short fiction has been justly described as luminous and erotic. This small sampler demonstrates her flexibility with styles and subjects that vary from the deeply moving and accessible to the more obscure and elusive. Interwoven in each piece is a recurrent theme of women’s experience in snapshots of important stages of life, both as it is perceived by the women themselves and by men who can only guess about them from a remove. Some of the stories feature fantastical elements with prose that is heavily metaphoric and lyrical. Others are more realistically grounded and are thereby starker in their depictions of violence and physical frailty. As with all collections, some of the stories are stronger than others, and a few cross the border into pretentiousness with Hall’s sometimes excessive use of perplexing symbolism. Still, Sarah Hall is obviously a wonderful and creative writer with a strong message and the skill with which to convey her point of view. Sudden Traveler is a nice short introduction to her work and will encourage an open-minded reader to seek out her other offerings.
Thanks to the author, Custom House/William Morrow, and Library Thing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
I received this ARC from TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.
Sudden Traveler is a beautiful collection of short stories interwoven by the delicately threaded narrative that speaks the language of feminine identity. Each story is an exploration of the essence of female embodiment. Not focusing on sex as gender but rather the classification, agency, violation, sorority, disambiguate, and celebration of what makes a being a woman.
These short stories range in tone by the narrator of each tale. Written in a way that a mother might tell her daughter or a sister to her own; every story is told as one would hear them mouth to ear. Spoken. Some of the voices are broken and distant as they describe the defilement of their innocence. Other voices burn with fervor as the woman is forged into a weapon of her defense. And some are the soft murmurs of affection, if not acceptance.
‘The greatest betrayal of all is to disaffiliate’
Hall has created a council and sisterhood in Sudden Traveler. Sometimes we are crushed beneath the boot of the world we are born to and the only saving grace is knowing that those who were walked on before us know the way to survive. In these lovely accounts, one woman might learn the lesson but she is a symbol for each of us, and each of these women’s suffering and joys are that of all women. This collection highlights the fact that we women don’t keep our secrets to save ourselves, we share them to save others.
‘…I am not this; she could tell him everything, or nothing because the present is in each millionth moment remade and unstoppable, forgiveness, war, cause, cure, all moments, all selves, possible.’
Each of these anecdotes is uniquely random but universal. As a female reader, I can sense that these characters are people I have known or who I could understand becoming. Sometimes I am the voyeur of the life I might once have lead. While other times I am so deeply sunken into the bland anonymity of rote motion that I become a victim of my own sense of contentment. I could easily be or become an Ara or a Dilly.
‘We are all sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.’
This book is beautiful. I highly recommend it. If you enjoy these stories I suggest you also check out Anatomy by Simon Travers; it is a collection of stories and poems expressing the beauty of unflinching intimacy.