"When you immerse yourself in Elise Schmit's stories, the possibility of upheaval in your own life suddenly takes on a presence that lends everything around you a radiance you don't want to lose" ―Guy Helminger
The old, the new, and the moment in-between: nine brilliant stories about life’s tipping points, and what happens next
A whale arrives on the shore of a fashionable seaside resort, and two friends unexpectedly encounter their own past. A video on social media tells the story of a love that is no longer. A late-season swimmer pushes on against the inexorable tide of time. A boy dreams of flying to Mars. A blue bird emerges from a tangerine and speaks to a world rocked by disasters…
In her new collection, Elise Schmit writes about those dazzling moments when everything changes, when the past dissolves but the future hasn’t quite yet arrived. The people she writes about yearn for change, for a way out of their lives, but they are also afraid. What gradually emerges from these tales is a portrait of a society seeking an alternative to isolation – perceptive, lucid and compelling.
I would like to travel, not far, just to someone who knows who I was in another time.