Wish I Was Here

Love - in "Wish I Was Here", Jackie Kay explores every facet of this most overwhelming and complicated of human emotions. In her distinctive voice, simultaneously fierce and delicate, she exposes the moments of tenderness, of shock, of bravery and stupidity that accompany the search for love, the discovery of love and, most of all, love's loss. Every story here resonates with bittersweet lucidity. Fearlessly scrutinizing her characters at their moments of greatest vulnerability, Kay brings the chaotic experience of love - and of simply living - into crystalline focus. "Wish I Was Here" is another work of wondrous emotional intensity and almost blinding illumination by one of our most original and engaging talents. Praise for "Why Don't You Stop Talking?": 'The beauty of Kay's stories is in how much they continue to resonate long after finishing' - "Time Out". 'Jackie Kay is a virtuoso of voices that go straight to your guts... However different these voices, they all have that warm blend of humour and the detailed noticing of tiny objects which lights up the everyday world and is Kay's hallmark as a novelist and poet...Warm, gently surreal, wittily compassionate and beautifully written' - "Independent on Sunday". 'These pieces contain - and ultimately liberate - definitively human ordinariness, a rigmarole of isolation and love, fidelity and betrayal, noise and silence, birth and death' Guardian"