This is a woman as a mother, daughter, wife, spectator, lover, mistress. She shifts between roles, countries, and languages. Skilled and successful, she controls how much she cares. Yet as every new woman emerges and every new story is told, the calm surfaces of Joanna Walsh's Vertigo shatter, pulling us into the panic underlying everyday life.

Women between mothers and daughters, between husbands and possible lovers and lovers of their husbands; women dressed up bright as children so their own children won't lose them, women watching the grey elegance of the Parisiennes; women between countries and languages, between the rich and the poor; women terrifyingly aware of their place or lack of it - the vertigo of empty space. These women observe everyone including themselves and those nearest to them with a keen eye and in a deceptively calm tone, which starts to strain against deeper and less- controlled feelings. Joanna Walsh finds her own particular tone in the wry and intimate stories of Vertigo. She probes difficult relationships and utters rarely voiced truths, as her stories gather a cumulative force that pulls us under their deceptively calm surfaces.