Elise Valmorbida: News and reviews

Disclaimer: I studied French and English with the author of these books nearly thirty years ago.
I have not laid eyes on her since, or communicated with her about her writing, but have been following her work with interest for a long time since I found and read her first book, published in Australia as Matilde Waltzing.
Elise Valmorbida now lives in London where she has a communications agency and teaches creative writing. She has a new novel coming out this month in the UK, and has recently written two books which I bought and read a little while ago, and have reviewed quickly here today.

The stories in Elise Valmorbida's 2007 collection, The Book Of Happy Endings, are interleaved with expressive photos by several contributors and with a romance conducted through letters between two people who meet in a bar.
They are fictionalised accounts of the life stories of love given to the author in London, 'the world in one city', as she puts it, by strangers: "It was a happy task, prompting others to tell their tale."

She paraphrases some East London graffiti in her Introduction, 'it's never too late to have a happy childhood,' in order to capture how meeting with some of these people made her feel: "It's never too late to start a happy ending."

These tales are affecting without being devastating: like the photographs spread throughout, they are shots taken in the distance, using time to distil memory and the device of talking to a writer to capture it afresh. Of course this charming, poignant collection contains loss and sadness, without which there would be no depth to its compositions. I particularly liked "She Was Dear", "Map Of Love", "Hungarian Kiss", and "When The Heart Chooses".

The TV President was published as Barack Obama came to power and may have suffered for that, this reviewer in the TLS drawing attention to that campaign's successful use of the media, even as he noted that the book focussed more on the pitfalls of reality television, and on the problems society could face if obsessions with celebrity were manipulated any further than they are already by corporations.

Perhaps Jade Goody should be kept in mind, rather than the Obamas, when reading this book.

It reminded me of D.B.C Pierre's Vernon God Little at times in tone: it is narrated largely in a deadpan voice-over that unveils a panoply of wacky characters, all entangled in some way or another with a ghoulish reality television program that pits JFK lookalikes against each other for a cash prize.

When one of them is accidentally shot in a Book Depository re-enactment, the hunt for his killer is of less interest to the audience than the whereabouts and identity of his opponent, who is kidnapped by the dead competitor's wife.  (I do hope that's not a spoiler lurking there.)

There are some splendidly black and silly moments in this book - if you are a fan of Big Love it is worth reading just to visit the fundamentalist motel with carpets of salt and no televisions halfway through, with its spooky invitation, "Wanna Escape TV? Try lodging with The Lot!"

It is set in a bleakly homogenised United States where people consume Foodz, Drinx and Drugz and the Reall Life corporation runs the show, which it is marketing as a franchise to forty countries.

This self-contained satire, where intelligent devils have been surgically planted in every detail, deserves more readers. I enjoyed seeing Valmorbida extend herself with something completely different in The TV President, and hope she does it again soon. She has a new novel coming out this month, The Winding Stick - there's a short interview and extract here, and yes, I've ordered my copy.

Comments

[Sophie Moore]

Hi Genevieve,

My name is Sophie and I am writing on behalf of Diana Neutze. Diana taught Elise and is now in her 70's, living in New Zealand with advanced Multiple Sclerosis. We were setting up a blog and website for Diana alongside a facebook page. She asked me to look up a couple of names for her, just people she was interested in seeing where they had got to. Elise was one of them and Diana was pleasantly surprised to find that she has become very successful. Obviously there isn't a direct contact for her but this blog was the closest I have gotten to personal contact with her. I am aware that if you have contact details you probably won't be willing to give them out over the internet but I was wondering if you could possibly take the time to email me with what you know of her and if you don't feel comfortable giving me a contact for her (that's if you even have one) then you could give Elise Diana's contact in case she is interested.

Thank you so much for your time,

Sophie