Review by Frank Plowright

Considerable and continuing ambiguity are the trademarks of Ana Galvañ’s collection of perplexing tales. There are four supplied, each following a protagonist in mystifying circumstances. The puzzles begin with the creation of what appears to be a female avatar on the sample page subsequently transformed into a definitely female figure, who then becomes two. Her features are few and expressionless, so are we seeing the story of a ‘real’ woman in a terrifying world or appreciating a construction? Galvañ certainly isn’t inclined to supply answers.

At least her remaining stories feature some dialogue, but they’re also fractured glimpses into disturbing lives where sex is abstracted and mystery is presented without ever being resolved. Perhaps that suggests a frustrating experience, and it certainly will be for readers who want their fiction clear cut and easily compartmentalised, but anyone who prefers to ruminate over possibilities will find Press Enter to Continue a matter of ongoing intrigue.

That’s increased by Galvañ’s use of geometrically shaped areas of colour overlaid on the art, tidily, but seemingly randomly. The feeling is there’s no meaning represented, yet the method adds to the unsettling air of a world where phrases we don’t understand are routinely employed, and there’s nothing strange about a woman leaving a job interview on her hands and knees via a large flap. She’s pressing to exit, if you will. Constantly fragmented and pixelated people add to the unease.

It’s an unappealing world of people living lives you wouldn’t want to. The paranoia and suspicion comes to a head in the final story of what seems an ordinary woman either being opened up to the truth behind everything or being sucked into the fantasies of others. The placement of tigers is a recurring theme connecting to the opening dose of mystification.

Galvañ’s brightly coloured world of depression is one to absorb and appreciate without becoming too hung up on the logic.