An intense, tautly crafted novel of sensual manipulation and suspense that confirms the arrival of a fantastic new talent.
In her spotless top-floor flat, Stella has created the ultimate cocoon. Her life is impeccably ordered, spare, and completely sealed within her London flat. Everything comes to her—her aromatherapy massage clients, her pharmaceuticals, and her lovers. When Ivan, the gasman, comes to fix a leak in her flat, she asks him to stay to for good. Soon, a Vertigo-like spiral of secrets and betrayals begin to seep through the flat like the acrid, yellow odor of gas. And as the two engage in a brilliantly choreographed erotic dance, Stella’s life gradually slips through her fingers as everything she has sought to control turns against her.
The Washington Post - Susan Adams
Visman displays a flair for precise, almost frugal, prose, making Yellow a tense, compact story that will hold readers in its unsettling grip until the final page.
Publishers Weekly
Visman does turn out some sharp prose while keeping readers guessing, but Stella is too grating to hold readers' sympathy, even when she deserves it.
Library Journal - Elaine Bender
Clues exist for the careful reader, but overall Vismans's (Sex Education) slim novel spanning five days just doesn't jell, straddling the line between psychological drama and crime fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Captivating, like Ruth Rendell at her best, but with a mordant hipness that marks the welcome U.S. debut of British novelist Visman.
Booklist - Joanne Wilkinson
In this understated, beautifully written page-turner, Visman uses spare, ambiguous details to create an atmosphere of overwhelming menace and paranoia as Stella's small, orderly world starts to disintegrate.
The Times Literary Supplement
Simple but highly effective, Yellow sets the net curtains of one's mind a twitch.
The Daily Mail
A taut, maze-like narrative that will entrap you within pages.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Oona High expectations, ok book I was surprised when I picked up this title at the library - it is more of a short story than a novel. My disclaimer is that I like longer stories, with intricate plots. Having said that, this book was a disappointment. It reads quickly, and kept... Read More
Janni Visman
studied film at the London
College of printing and mixed
media at the Slade School of
Fine Art. She lives in London.
Her first novel, Sex
Education was published by
Bloomsbury UK in 2002 and,
according to one reviewer offers
'the most haunting portrayal of
the abusive power of
relationships in girls'
friendships since Atwood's
Cat's Eye'. Yellow is
her second novel and her first
to be published in the USA.
Visman says 'in a desperate rush
to finish my first novel, Sex
Education, I was confined to
my study for over a week.
Anxious to avoid any
distractions, I got my food
shopping delivered via the
internet or my husband kindly
went out and got supplies. I was
beginning to get...
Unable to come to terms with his father's horrifying secret, Colin decides to live 'visibly invisible' on the streets - but events force him to confront the past and his new found place in the world.
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Judge rules unused Borders gift cards to be worthless(May 23 2013) Borders owes nothing to holders of roughly $210.5 million of gift cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain shut down, a Manhattan federal...
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