179 x 122mm, 120 pages, Black & white printing, Perfect bound, Softcover, 2022

Both moving and deeply funny, We Still Have the Telephone illuminates Van Horn's long-practised miniaturist skills as an artist and her ethnographic curiosity as a writer. In this mosaic of a singular everywoman, Van Horn describes a life laid out in detail, quietly registering the fuzziness of the line between eccentricity and madness: the Second World War exists on a par with plastic straws; immutable rituals with an irrepressible anarchy; and fragments of a multigenerational chronicle with anecdotes of sometimes-strange tokens of maternal love. Van Horn's creation is one of her most accomplished works to date. 'For a story that takes as its starting point the ongoing task of writing the obituary for its protagonist, this is a remarkably unsentimental book. Like mother like daughter: both abhor waste. Gathered here are 'details' that are unlikely to find their way into the final draft. These document the mother's rituals, and characteristic way with things: envelopes, coins, Broadway musicals, and the United Nations. We read these through the tender, amused gaze of the daughter, and the wry style that makes Van Horn's writing such a delight.

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