The Trick is to Keep Breathing

The Trick is to Keep Breathing is the first novel from the writer Janice Galloway. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Polygon in 1989. The novel won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year and was also shortlisted for both the Whitbread First Novel and Scottish First Book awards. Drama teacher Joy Stone is losing her grip. In an intriguing story of the onset and evolution of depression, her problems accumulate, denial activates, and food becomes a major player. All the while, she is trying to cope with the loss of her married lover and her own mother. Through the wit and irony that... is gaining international applause, Galloway crafts the chicken-or-egg dilemma of life in our times and being depressed. Yet even through her growing obsessions and the metamorphoses of family and friends into suspicious characters, Galloway's main character and the reader find that the trick in living rests with the simplest things. The novel's protagonist and narrator. She is 27 years old. She lives on a council estate on the outskirts of Irvine, North Ayrshire, not far from the dilapidated cottage she owns. She is a Drama teacher, and works part-time at a bookmakers.
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