Because I Don't Know What You Mean and What You Don't

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From her new home in Glasgow, the much-loved standup insists there’s much more to life than sweating on the Central line and doing hand-to-hand combat with the city’s cost-of-living crisis. While Vanhoenacker takes us on fascinating journeys to Brasília and Cape Town, Liverpool and Jeddah, this is not just a travelogue of the cities in which he lands. It's a book I'll read again - if you know Josie Long as a comedian, don't go into this one expecting laughs.

With everything from teenage friendship to parenthood to leaving London, this debut collection is perfect for fans of Miranda July, Emma Jane Unsworth and Dolly Alderton. The writing and Long’s craft does leave a little to be desired with some more editing having been beneficial. Each of them is dealing with their own issues and tensions, and I found it fascinating to read about them, even if only briefly. And I expect a lot of readers will come to this for Long's voice and viewpoint, and will be more than satisfied.

There are also times you want Long to imbue important moments with more detail, and slow the pace, so the reader can really feel what's being portrayed. Even though Josie Long has had a 20-odd-year-long career in the arts, she still finds it hard to believe that she has written a book.

If you live in a time zone that does not suit the initial broadcast time you can watch it at any point after the initial showing for two weeks. Best surely is the piece regarding a charged attack on the upper middle classes, from two young women determined to get their slice. What You Don’t] had a really long genesis, even though I’ve only written the stories in the last couple of years,” says Long, “When I was at university I really thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do with my life. It was like this itch that I wanted to scratch but when I started scratching it I was ‘oh, shit, oh no, ha ha, this is awful’.And later I would carry around this black ring binder full of my stories, like someone might think ‘oh, this 12-year-old has got things to say, oh great she’s got it with her’, but I never finished them.

I enjoy Josie Long’s socialist comedy and her soft voice presenting the Radio 4 series Short Cuts, so I was looking forward to seeing what her first short story collection would be like. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

And I like the idea of putting different types of energy in the book, having some stories more plot driven and some more emotional. Canongate has snapped up Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and What You Don’t by British comedian Josie Long, a "refreshingly frank" collection of short stories.