Beth Ryan's collection of short fiction, What is Invisible, was published by Killick Press in 2003.
The book won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction and the Best Atlantic Published Book prize.
After the book was released, Beth was invited to take part in various literary festivals and reading series, including Word on the Street Halifax, Winterset in the Summer, Wine and Words at Newman's Wine Vault, The Writers' Alliance monthly reading, Women and Words, James Bay Inn (Victoria), Double Hook Bookstore (Montreal) and public libraries in St. John's and Holyrood.
Stories from What is Invisible have been on the reading list for first, second and third-year English courses at Memorial University and Beth has regularly visited those classes to talk with students about her fiction.
Reviews for What is Invisible
What is Invisible was reviewed in local and national publications, including newspapers, magazines, and literary and academic journals.
Canadian Book Review Annual Online - R. Gordon Moyles
Ryan is indeed a very fine writer, at her best in the story “Family Business,” where, in brilliant understatement and a suggestive undercurrent, she delivers a powerful impact. Ryan’s stories are eminently worth reading; her ability to invest ordinary lives with profound (though often tragic) meaning lifts her beyond the ordinary. This is an impressive debut.
The Telegram - Joan Sullivan
What is Invisible is the first book from writer Beth Ryan, and it’s stunning. The even dozen stories here are keenly honed, peopled with characters full of life, and truth, who grapple with the intimate events and domestic crises that are the essence of drama.
What is Invisible is aptly titled. For what is invisible? Love and grief, a need, a fear. What attracts people to each other, or repels them. These dreads and desires live in the heart and the mind. But, in her writing, Ryan handily details their depths, effects and trajectories. Her words illustrate the invisible.te the invisible.”
The Globe and Mail - Jim Bartley
Against the grain of recent fiction from the Rock, Beth Ryan's Newfoundland home serves almost as a neutral backdrop in her debut collection. Its 12 stories unfold human dramas that only rarely seem site-specific; they're about the things that prove people the same. Varying widely in effect, when these tales are on target they stir the heart without requiring any suspension of intellect.
Newfoundland and Labrador Studies - Paul Chafe
Beth Ryan’s What is Invisible is a treasure waiting to be discovered. Ryan’s stories brim with the vivid detail that seems to be the calling card of her fellow Burning Rock writers, yet her writing possesses a realism, an immediacy, and an accessibility that is sometimes lacking in the more impressionistic work of her colleagues.
These characters carry essential parts of themselves and their communities with them whether they are going on vacation, moving away for work, or losing their jobs. These individuals as they are moving or being moved from their home community always carry with them this former self. This connection is invisible, yet it leaves a permanent and distinguishing mark on each of these transitory characters. Ryan’s realistic depiction of these complex characters in flux is what makes this collection so engaging and enjoyable.
Judge's Comments - Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards (Fiction)
Ryan's stories display a maturity of style and theme that is unusual in a first book. Although her prose is deceptively simple, she applies it with sensitivity and precision to a range of complex human problems.
Her characters tend to be losers, the dispossessed, people scorned, but the author sketches all of them with tenderness and compassion. Ryan entices her reader intimately into the hearts and souls of her characters. She forges this bond by way of her own gentle humour and her skillful use of dialogue, and by her candid and unsentimental view of human tragedy.
One item in particular ought to be singled out. "The Song of Bernadette" is a straightforward but exquisitely crafted and deeply moving story. It describes the life together of a devoted mother and her severely disabled child, and the ambiguous impact of the child's death. The savage honesty of this melancholy but achingly beautiful piece grips the reader fully, and is the jewel in this splendid collection.
University of Toronto Quarterly - Noreen Golfman
Newfoundland-based Beth Ryan's first collection inclines towards the traditional but it also bristles with resistance to that end of the spectrum in exciting ways. The stories in What Is Invisible are as unpretentious as the characters who are drawn on its pages. Above all, Ryan is resolutely interested in the human subject, endowed with dignity in even the most humiliating or deprived circumstances.
What remains most striking about What Is Invisible is how Ryan's stories seem to be playing with their conclusions. Some rise to sudden surprise while more than a few advance tentatively, without clear markers of resolution or noticeable change, scarcely hinting at new beginnings. It is as if Ryan were experimenting with the short story form itself and its inherent demand for meaningful endings.
The Downhomer Magazine - Leslie McNab
Ryan writes with compassion for her characters and with an open, honest voice – no distracting, florid phrases. Her ability with words and keen eye for detail make the stories in What is Invisible feel so familiar, it's like they happened to you or someone you know. The stories in What is Invisible examine human frailties from within – the hidden impulses that compel us to make choices that we sometimes regret. What is Invisible is a thorough delight, full of stories and characters that truly embed themselves into the reader's imagination.
The Newfoundland Quarterly - Danielle Devereaux
What is Invisible is a fitting title for Beth Ryan’s first book of short stories. The epigraph, a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, reads: “It is only through the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” And, indeed, these stories are all about what is invisible, what the heart sees. Ryan’s writing style is open and unobtrusive (another reason why I think the title of the collection works so well!) allowing the reader to slip into the story and fall in love with the characters.
