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Valletta78
What happens when pretending to be someone else on the Internet is no longer enough? VALLETTA78 is a wickedly serious story of online transformation, revealing how virtual exchanges redefine love and suffering in terms otherwise unattainable. For Valletta78, support groups for survivors of tragedies she's never suffered become a regular habit, a spiraling escape from a tedious marriage and a seductive expansion of everything that's possible. Combining first-person confessions with search and chat logs, VALLETTA78 is a mesmerizing mix of dark comedy and fragile truths.
98 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 15, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 6, 2016
Incredibly smart novella about life online. I loved the darkness of it all. A really great read. Check it out.
February 6, 2017
I made up stuff I was wearing that I don't even own, and then I typed yes baby yes for five minutes in one window and watched a video about a dog trainer in another window.
That sentence encapsulates the detached tone of this novella about real and online lives. 'Valletta78' is the internet alias adopted by the narrator – after the featureless housing development in which she lives, not the Maltese capital. She's bored, unemployed, indifferently married, and lonely. She met her husband Brandon on a cruise, after both won their trips in different contests. Now, he goes to work while she sits at home and numbly chats to men online, occasionally going out for a shopping trip or an appointment with her therapist.
Cybersex is one thing, but the story takes a darker turn when Valletta78 starts frequenting support forums for victims of conditions and tragedies she's never suffered. On an insomnia forum, she invents a brother with cancer, soliciting sympathy and gifts from strangers. She also strikes up a friendship with a guy she calls Win, short for Winfield; in keeping with her own moniker, she names her chat partners for the towns they come from.
Valletta78 is about the space between online identities and reality; the different ways in which loneliness can manifest; making connections, and which parts of those connections can be said to be real when one or both parties are telling lies about themselves. It doesn't really say much about these themes, though, it just presents them. Despite an unexpectedly sad denouement (unexpected because the plot appears to be building to a moment of catharsis), the ending seems to prove the protagonist hasn't learned anything. The story seems designed for a 'so what?' reaction, a shrug and a half-hearted shake of the head. I mean, I liked it! I think it's worth reading. But it's about someone who is empty, and so it can't help but feel rather blank itself.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
That sentence encapsulates the detached tone of this novella about real and online lives. 'Valletta78' is the internet alias adopted by the narrator – after the featureless housing development in which she lives, not the Maltese capital. She's bored, unemployed, indifferently married, and lonely. She met her husband Brandon on a cruise, after both won their trips in different contests. Now, he goes to work while she sits at home and numbly chats to men online, occasionally going out for a shopping trip or an appointment with her therapist.
Cybersex is one thing, but the story takes a darker turn when Valletta78 starts frequenting support forums for victims of conditions and tragedies she's never suffered. On an insomnia forum, she invents a brother with cancer, soliciting sympathy and gifts from strangers. She also strikes up a friendship with a guy she calls Win, short for Winfield; in keeping with her own moniker, she names her chat partners for the towns they come from.
Valletta78 is about the space between online identities and reality; the different ways in which loneliness can manifest; making connections, and which parts of those connections can be said to be real when one or both parties are telling lies about themselves. It doesn't really say much about these themes, though, it just presents them. Despite an unexpectedly sad denouement (unexpected because the plot appears to be building to a moment of catharsis), the ending seems to prove the protagonist hasn't learned anything. The story seems designed for a 'so what?' reaction, a shrug and a half-hearted shake of the head. I mean, I liked it! I think it's worth reading. But it's about someone who is empty, and so it can't help but feel rather blank itself.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
November 8, 2015
Read this recently and have written a review for it, here: http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/V...
I've posted it here, as well:
Erin Fitzgerald’s debut novella is, first and foremost, an ode to crying out into the techno-void during this early part of the internet age. If it’s possible to sum up the book in just one line, it’d have to be: Valletta78 is the story of people who need people but keep them forever at arm’s length.
The internet is a useful means to this end, as the title character proves.
Told primarily as the first-person narrative of a woman operating under the username Valletta78, we are led into her carefully managed world of email exchanges with self-help forum moderators; private chat room sessions with a fellow insomniac-turned-romantic-interest whose username is Winfield; and reflections on her day-to-day experiences with her husband, Brandon; her psychologist, Dr. Martin; and the strange prefabricated community in which she resides, Valletta.
If the internet was designed to connect the world, why do its users seem even more isolated, more alone, despite their constant communication, than they are in their lives outside the web? Their lives outside are lonely indeed, adding to this paradox, one Fitzgerald intensely explores.
There’s a particular moment in the book that illustrates the relationship between these characters quite well (and the overarching narrative theme of technological loneliness that colors the novella), when during one of many a private chat room session between Valletta78 and Winfield, the characters have the following exchange:
Winfield: I like how we can sit here for a few minutes and not say anything.
Winfield: It’s like sitting together and not having to saying anything.
Winfield: Maybe we could do this in person someday.
Valletta78: that would be great.
This passage tersely demonstrates a feature of the instant message era: the ability to choose to respond or not respond to a chat companion at any given moment. What would generally be considered rude or at least inattentive in a conventional conversation, is entirely acceptable in this format. Valletta78 owes nothing to Winfield in that sense.
These kinds of detached relationships aren’t unique to the internet, of course. Early on, we are introduced to Dr. Martin, who exists largely as an abstraction, always talked about but never active in any scene until one near the story’s end. He has in this sense a kind of omnipotent quality, as the sounding board of every truth Valletta78 wishes to tell:
Tell Dr. Martin.
Tell Dr. Martin you pretend.
Tell Dr. Martin you pretend to be other people.
Tell Dr. Martin you pretend to be other people on the Internet.
At the very least, there’s a feeling Dr. Martin has the power to absolve Valletta78 of her sins, and offer her some kind of penance. When we do finally get our glimpse of the man, we see someone who is as human as anyone else. His special power is nothing more than that he is paid to listen. The man seems as aloof as any deity, compassion once again eluding Valletta78.
We are given a clear view of what the community of Valletta is and what it represents to the title character. She sees in it a setting of contrasts, a place of optical illusion. She says, “…I saw that [Valletta] was supposed to feel big and clean and friendly. The yards in my new neighborhood were small, so the houses looked big. The parking lot at my new grocery store was small, so the cars looked big.” All around are constructs designed to alter a person’s sense of proportion, for the benefit of those who have manufactured Valletta. It seems a fitting metaphor for Valletta78’s online reality, in which she can sculpt her own characters who are as large and small as she likes.
Fitzgerald shows us the dichotomous lives her protagonist lives most keenly in the form of the protagonist’s husband, Brandon, who becomes her cancer-stricken brother in the fictitious life she has formed online. Brandon in-real-life (irl) and the Brandon who is exclusive to her online persona, Valletta78, share very little in common. One could make the argument that they both have dissatisfying relationships with their respective significant others, but beyond that, little else is the same.
Brandon of the web is earnest and warm where Brandon (irl) is generally aloof and emotionally unavailable. Brandon of the web is suffering from terminal cancer where Brandon (irl) is healthy. So much of what Valletta78 begins to render in her fictional brother, Brandon, seems to be what she wants in her real-life spouse.
Valletta78 is a very sympathetic character in this regard, despite the lies she perpetuates and her willingness to take advantage of the insomnia-help forum she visits nightly. There, she cultivates “Brandon” and his struggles with cancer, inventing new problems for him designed to elicit their sympathies (drama with an equally fictional girlfriend, Darlene, chief among them). The forum moderator in particular sends gift cards and baked goods to the P.O. box she’s made for ”Brandon”.
All of this would be far more terrible if Valletta78 seemed to take real pleasure from her misdeeds. But it never feels that way. She seems to believe in the “Brandon” of her creation, certainly far more than Brandon (irl). This all comes out in her slightly more earnest moments with Winfield, for whom it’s clear she feels real affection.
The climax of the story comes when Valletta78 faces the choice of leaving Brandon and pursuing her relationship with Winfield to its only logical end, by meeting irl. She will be confronted with the reality that she’s not the only one capable of pretending to be someone else. Winfield may be less real than a snowflake melting on her car windshield.
The story comes to an ultimately sad though entirely rewarding conclusion. Valletta78 is not so much undone by her experience – the loss of her online world – but she becomes more careful, seeming ready to start afresh and construct a new and better online reality, all over again.
The internet affords people like her such opportunities, and she knows it always will.
I've posted it here, as well:
Erin Fitzgerald’s debut novella is, first and foremost, an ode to crying out into the techno-void during this early part of the internet age. If it’s possible to sum up the book in just one line, it’d have to be: Valletta78 is the story of people who need people but keep them forever at arm’s length.
The internet is a useful means to this end, as the title character proves.
Told primarily as the first-person narrative of a woman operating under the username Valletta78, we are led into her carefully managed world of email exchanges with self-help forum moderators; private chat room sessions with a fellow insomniac-turned-romantic-interest whose username is Winfield; and reflections on her day-to-day experiences with her husband, Brandon; her psychologist, Dr. Martin; and the strange prefabricated community in which she resides, Valletta.
If the internet was designed to connect the world, why do its users seem even more isolated, more alone, despite their constant communication, than they are in their lives outside the web? Their lives outside are lonely indeed, adding to this paradox, one Fitzgerald intensely explores.
There’s a particular moment in the book that illustrates the relationship between these characters quite well (and the overarching narrative theme of technological loneliness that colors the novella), when during one of many a private chat room session between Valletta78 and Winfield, the characters have the following exchange:
Winfield: I like how we can sit here for a few minutes and not say anything.
Winfield: It’s like sitting together and not having to saying anything.
Winfield: Maybe we could do this in person someday.
Valletta78: that would be great.
This passage tersely demonstrates a feature of the instant message era: the ability to choose to respond or not respond to a chat companion at any given moment. What would generally be considered rude or at least inattentive in a conventional conversation, is entirely acceptable in this format. Valletta78 owes nothing to Winfield in that sense.
These kinds of detached relationships aren’t unique to the internet, of course. Early on, we are introduced to Dr. Martin, who exists largely as an abstraction, always talked about but never active in any scene until one near the story’s end. He has in this sense a kind of omnipotent quality, as the sounding board of every truth Valletta78 wishes to tell:
Tell Dr. Martin.
Tell Dr. Martin you pretend.
Tell Dr. Martin you pretend to be other people.
Tell Dr. Martin you pretend to be other people on the Internet.
At the very least, there’s a feeling Dr. Martin has the power to absolve Valletta78 of her sins, and offer her some kind of penance. When we do finally get our glimpse of the man, we see someone who is as human as anyone else. His special power is nothing more than that he is paid to listen. The man seems as aloof as any deity, compassion once again eluding Valletta78.
We are given a clear view of what the community of Valletta is and what it represents to the title character. She sees in it a setting of contrasts, a place of optical illusion. She says, “…I saw that [Valletta] was supposed to feel big and clean and friendly. The yards in my new neighborhood were small, so the houses looked big. The parking lot at my new grocery store was small, so the cars looked big.” All around are constructs designed to alter a person’s sense of proportion, for the benefit of those who have manufactured Valletta. It seems a fitting metaphor for Valletta78’s online reality, in which she can sculpt her own characters who are as large and small as she likes.
Fitzgerald shows us the dichotomous lives her protagonist lives most keenly in the form of the protagonist’s husband, Brandon, who becomes her cancer-stricken brother in the fictitious life she has formed online. Brandon in-real-life (irl) and the Brandon who is exclusive to her online persona, Valletta78, share very little in common. One could make the argument that they both have dissatisfying relationships with their respective significant others, but beyond that, little else is the same.
Brandon of the web is earnest and warm where Brandon (irl) is generally aloof and emotionally unavailable. Brandon of the web is suffering from terminal cancer where Brandon (irl) is healthy. So much of what Valletta78 begins to render in her fictional brother, Brandon, seems to be what she wants in her real-life spouse.
Valletta78 is a very sympathetic character in this regard, despite the lies she perpetuates and her willingness to take advantage of the insomnia-help forum she visits nightly. There, she cultivates “Brandon” and his struggles with cancer, inventing new problems for him designed to elicit their sympathies (drama with an equally fictional girlfriend, Darlene, chief among them). The forum moderator in particular sends gift cards and baked goods to the P.O. box she’s made for ”Brandon”.
All of this would be far more terrible if Valletta78 seemed to take real pleasure from her misdeeds. But it never feels that way. She seems to believe in the “Brandon” of her creation, certainly far more than Brandon (irl). This all comes out in her slightly more earnest moments with Winfield, for whom it’s clear she feels real affection.
The climax of the story comes when Valletta78 faces the choice of leaving Brandon and pursuing her relationship with Winfield to its only logical end, by meeting irl. She will be confronted with the reality that she’s not the only one capable of pretending to be someone else. Winfield may be less real than a snowflake melting on her car windshield.
The story comes to an ultimately sad though entirely rewarding conclusion. Valletta78 is not so much undone by her experience – the loss of her online world – but she becomes more careful, seeming ready to start afresh and construct a new and better online reality, all over again.
The internet affords people like her such opportunities, and she knows it always will.
March 2, 2017
A short, compelling, genuinely surprising read. I enjoyed it so much I don't want to start a new book. Recommended by Roxane Gay.
March 17, 2016
I really liked this book. It's scary that the depths of loneliness and boredom(?) could lead to a life as darkly, but real seeming, as described in this novella. The cool part was the format of chat logs, searches, emails, and traditional writing. From time to time, I actually forgot what was real and what wasn't. Usually typos in books, for me, are like nails on a chalkboard. This book was either published by a small press or self-published; I feel it deserves slack for the 6 (who's counting) typos I ran across. Heck, I probably have a tpyo in this review!. I would read this if I were you. You won't be disappointed.
March 9, 2016
From my blurb: "The best villains are the well-developed villains--the complex monsters in which you can see some aspect of yourself, some piece of the darkness in your own heart that you cannot face. In Valletta78, Fitzgerald lures us into the underbelly of online friendships and suburban dreams, persuaded by fictions, rooting for liars and self-destroyers, and loving every minute of it. She'll make you think about accepting a friend request or taking advice from an online forum, and most of all, she'll make you think the next time you hit that send button yourself."
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews