“Dogs are our link to paradise.” (Milan Kundera)

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Trigger warning: mentions suicide

After a focus on cats last week, I thought this week I’d look at a book with dog, The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (2018).

The novel is addressed to ‘you’ throughout: a friend and mentor of the narrator who has died by suicide. They were friends for many years and her grief is deep.

“The dead dwell in the conditional, tense of the unreal. But there is also the extraordinary sense that you have become omniscient, that nothing we do or think or feel can be kept from you. The extraordinary sense that you are reading these words, that you know what they’ll say even before I write them.”

The person was a writer and teacher, as is the narrator. What I thought worked well was that the dead person didn’t sound particularly likeable – a vain, slightly arrogant man who used his moderate fame and academic position to sleep with lots of women, and became angry and bitter when his looks faded and the world moved on. The narrator doesn’t seek to excuse or validate this behaviour. She didn’t approve of it, but she valued her friend and the relationship they had for many years. She is grieving an imperfect person and she is wise enough not to try and make him anything other than who he was.

Wife Three visits her and pulls a guilt trip about the man’s Great Dane dog, who is pining.

“You can’t explain death.

And love deserves better than that.”

And so Apollo, the only named being in the story, moves into her tiny apartment, where her lease forbids dogs. And he is a lot of dog:

“Thirty-four inches from shoulder to paw. A hundred and eighty pounds. Attached was a photograph of the two of you, cheek to jowl, the massive head at first glance looking like a pony’s.”

The descriptions of the grieving dog, of his subdued, baffled silence are heartbreaking, and an effective display of grief alongside a human who is expected to get up, go to work, smile and be polite, do her shopping, clean her home. Apollo can behave more honestly:

“He walks with his head lowered, like a beast of burden.”

As the narrator talks to her friend, we get a sense of her emerging relationship with Apollo, his learning to trust her, and their deepening bond. There is no doubt the relationship is bound up in her deep grief and Apollo becomes a focus for her feelings.

Unlike the narrator’s friends though, I didn’t think it was particularly unhealthy or dysfunctional. There is a sense of the narrator as a writer trying to work through her feelings, sometimes intellectually by falling back on the writers and books she has spent her entire working life with, (including JR Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip, which I thought documented a much stranger relationship with a dog) and at other times by physically massaging the enormous canine.

“The friend who is most sympathetic about my situation calls to ask how I am. I tell him about trying music and massage to treat Apollo’s depression, and he asks if I’ve considered a therapist. I tell him I’m sceptical about pet shrinks, and he says, That’s not what I meant.”

This gentle humour runs throughout The Friend and stops it becoming mawkish. As the story is one writer talking to another, there are some spiky observations about the literary scene, such as at his funeral:

“It was not very different from other literary gatherings. People mingling at the reception were heard talking about money, literary prizes as reparations, and the latest die, author, die review.”

And also a repeated motif of the relief of writers who have found Something Else to do:

“Are you kidding? says a friend who raises goats on a farm upstate and makes award-winning chèvre. Writers block was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I’ve seen The Friend described as stream of consciousness. It is a conversation with a silent interlocutor (apart from one section, the only part that felt a bit clunky to me) but it has a structure, if not a plot. To me this was an effective portrayal of grief, which isn’t linear or logical.

“Is this the madness at the heart of it? Do I believe that if I am good to him, if I act selflessly and make sacrifices for him, do I believe that if I love Apollo – beautiful, ageing, melancholy Apollo – I will wake one morning to find him gone and you in his place, back from the land of the dead?”

Nunez mentions more than once: “There’s a certain kind of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog?” I am definitely that kind of person. If you are too, I don’t want to give spoilers but what I will say is that The Friend is a book about grief, and so it is a sad read, but it’s not a traumatic one.

The Friend isn’t a book to read for plot, or even for story. It is a reflection on friendship, writing, reading, aging; and a meditation on grief and grieving, and joys and pains of sharing our lives with humans and with animals. There is sadness and there is humour, and there is never a sense that grief is a price not worth paying, however painful.

“Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I’ll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.”

To end, a total legend:

“There are no ordinary cats.” (Colette)

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Mallika at Literary Potpourri’s wonderful event  Reading the Meow has been running all week, do check out all the great posts prompted by our feline friends! Here is my post just in time…

I’m grateful to Reading the Meow for finally getting me to pick up The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (finished in 1940, published in 1966) which is part of my Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century Reading Challenge and has been languishing in my TBR for years. Although not ostensibly a book about cats, one does feature prominently as these various edition covers will attest:

The reason it had lain unread for so long was because I’m (aptly) a big scaredy-cat. I was really intimidated by this classic of twentieth-century fiction and I thought it would be far too complex and clever for me to understand. Which as it turned out, was broadly correct. I’m sure I didn’t pick up all the allusions and references, even with the notes in the back of my edition to help me (Alma Classics, trans. Hugh Aplin 2020 – I definitely recommend this edition and translation).  However, I still found it very readable and a lot to enjoy, especially regarding Behemoth, the character that meant I was reading it this week particularly.

The Devil arrives in 1930s Moscow as a Professor Woland, along with his entourage: red headed, bizarrely dressed Korovyev; sinister vampiric Azazello; beautiful Hella; and Behemoth, an enormous cat that walks on his hindlegs, talks, drinks vodka and plays chess.

The proceed to wreak havoc for three days in a series of carnivalesque scenes, using the greed and corruption of people against them.  It’s absolute chaos and carnage, but brilliantly Bulgakov shows that the devil doesn’t have to push very hard for all this to occur.

At the start of the novel, Woland predicts the shocking and absurd death of Berlioz, head of Massolit, a literary organisation. Once people hear of his death, this description of a barrage of statements in order to get Berlioz’s apartment is a good example of how Bulgakov balances social realism, satire, the comic and the desperate throughout:

“In them were included entreaties, threats, slanders, denunciations, promises to carry out refurbishment at people’s own expense, references to unbearably crowded conditions and the impossibility of living in the same apartment as villains. Among other things, there was a description, stunning in its artistic power, of the theft of some ravioli, which had been stuffed directly into a jacket pocket, in apartment No.31, two vows to commit suicide and one confession to a secret pregnancy.”

Meanwhile, Margarita, beautiful and unhappily married, is distressed because her lover, The Master, has committed himself to an institution and renounced his writing.

This is interspersed with the story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua (Jesus), with the two stories echoing one another, and it emerges that this was the novel The Master was writing.

It is through the titular characters that Bulgakov prevents his satire becoming too bitter and alienating. Their devotion to each other and Margarita’s belief in The Master’s work is truly touching.

I don’t really want to say too much more as The Master and Margarita is such a complex, riotous piece of work that I think the more I try and pin it down the more I’ll tie myself in knots! It tackles the biggest of big themes; religion, state oppression, the role of art, love, faith, good and evil, how to live… It is a deeply serious work that isn’t afraid to be comical too.

But as this post is prompted by Behemoth, here is my favourite scene with him, getting ready for Satan’s Grand Ball on Good Friday and trying to distract from the fact that he is losing at chess:

“Standing on his hind legs and covered in dust, the cat was meanwhile bowing in greeting before Margarita. Around the cat’s neck there was now a white dress tie, done up in a bow, and on his chest a ladies mother-of-pearl opera glass on a strap. In addition, the cat’s whiskers were gilt.

‘Now what’s all this?’ exclaimed Woland. ‘Why have you gilded your whiskers? And why the devil do you need a tie if you’ve got no trousers on?’

‘A cat isn’t meant to wear trousers, Messire,’ replied the cat with great dignity. ‘Perhaps you’ll require me to don boots as well? Only in fairy tales is there a puss in boots, Messire. But have you ever seen anyone at a ball without a tie? I don’t intend to find myself in a comical situation and risk being thrown out on my ear! Everyone adorns himself in whatever way he can. Consider what has been said to apply to the opera glasses too, Messire!’

‘But the whiskers?’

‘I don’t understand why,’ retorted the cat drily, ‘When shaving today Azazello and Korovyev could sprinkle themselves with white powder – and in what way it’s better than the gold? I’ve powdered my whiskers, that’s all!’

[…]

‘Oh, the rogue, the rogue,’ said Woland shaking his head, ‘every time he’s in a hopeless position in the game he starts talking to distract you, like the very worst charlatan on the bridge. Sit down immediately and stop this verbal diarrhoea.’

‘I will sit down,’ replied the cat sitting down, ‘but I must object with regards your final point. My speeches are by no means diarrhoea, and you’re so good as to express yourself in the presence of a lady, but a series of soundly packaged syllogisms which would be appreciated on their merits by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella even, who knows, Aristotle himself.’

‘The kings in check,’ said Woland.

‘As you will, as you will,’ responded the cat, and began looking at the board through the opera glass.”

I think overall I probably admire The Master and Margarita more than love it, and I enjoyed Bulgakov’s A Country Doctor’s Notebook more. But there is so much in this extraordinary, unique novel that will stay with me, and I’m sure it will reward repeat readings too.

To end, I tried to get my two moggies to pose with the book. With typical cattitude, they flatly refused 😀  So it’s back to 80s pop videos:

“Life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.” (Daphne du Maurier)

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I was disappointed to miss posting for Ali’s annual Daphne du Maurier Reading Week this year, due to the demands of blogging on novellas every day for a month, so once that madness was over I thought I would enjoy a visit to this ever-readable author.

(Also, thank you to everyone who commented on which Big Massive Tome I should pick up after so many novellas. Bleak House was far and away the winner, so I’m embarking on Dickensian legal wrangling next 😊)

Apparently DDM said that Frenchman’s Creek (1941) was the only romantic novel she wrote. This meant I went into it expecting a similar experience to when I read Jamaica Inn, that is: enjoying it but wishing I had read it as a teenager. Now I’m older I’m more inclined towards the psychological darkness of My Cousin Rachel and her frankly terrifying short stories.

However, these expectations were confounded. Frenchman’s Creek can definitely be read as a romance: a young beautiful noblewoman leaves her stifling court life and starts running around the Cornish coast with a sexy French pirate. But I thought there were some much more interesting themes being explored in this novel too.

Dona St Columb is married to the ineffectual Harry, and is part of the indulgent court of Charles II. After a particular prank that she regrets, she leaves London and makes her way to Harry’s country pile in Cornwall.

“The sense of futility had been growing upon her for many months, nagging at her now and again like dormant toothache, but it had taken Friday night to arouse in her that full sense of self-loathing an exasperation, and because of Friday night she was jolting backwards and forwards now in this damnable coach, bound on a ridiculous journey to a house she had seen once in her life and knew nothing about, carrying with her, in anger and irritation, the two surprised children and their reluctant nurse.”

Once there, her pompous neighbour lets her know that dangers lurk amongst the beautiful countryside and coast, in the form of a successful pirate from Brittany.

“‘No lives have been lost as yet, and none of our women have been taken,’ said Godolphin stiffly, ‘but as this fellow is a Frenchman we all realise that it is only a question of time before something dastardly occurs.’”

Throughout the novel anyone expressing xenophobia is shown to be monumentally stupid, which is not always what I expect in novels of this period and it was certainly refreshing.

It isn’t long before Dona crosses paths with the captain of La Mouette, Jean Benoit Aubréy. Undoubtedly his portrait is romantic: he sketches birds, reads poetry, and of course is extremely handsome. Dona finds she has much in common with Jean Benoit, namely the search for an authentic life and personal freedom. As his loyal man William explains:

 “’Approve and disapprove are two words that are not in my vocabulary, my lady. Piracy suits my master, and that is all there is to it. His ship is his Kingdom, he comes and goes as he pleases, and no man can command him. He is a law unto himself.’”

Dona longs for something similar, but it is clearly demonstrated how limited she is due to being a woman. She has to meet the expectations of domestic roles, and also of her class. It is the insistence of her male neighbours that brings Harry to Cornwall, and his mendacious friend Rockingham, who poses a real threat to Dona.

Du Maurier expertly builds the tension as a trap is laid for the pirate, and he takes phenomenal risks to outmanoeuvre his enemies. Frenchman’s Creek is real page-turner, but it is also a believable exploration of a woman’s search for meaning and personal agency in her life. Her romantic partner is fully portrayed but not overly dwelt upon – this is Dona’s story and the romantic relationship is one that brings her back to herself:

“She felt, in a sense, like someone who had fallen under a spell, under some strange enchantment, because this sensation of quietude was foreign to her, who had lived hitherto in a turmoil of sound and movement. And yet at the same time the spell awoke echoes within her that she recognised, as though she had come to a place she had known always, and deeply desired, but had lost, through her own carelessness, or through circumstances, or the blunting of her own perception.”

Du Maurier really is so good at what she does. In Frenchman’s Creek she creates a compelling adventure alongside some lovely evocations of the natural world while highlighting the enduring challenges of the expectations placed on women. Dona’s quest for a life that will enable a fulfilling expression of self remains as relevant and compelling as ever.

“Much will be forgotten then, perhaps, the sound of the tide on the mud flats, the dark sky, the dark water, the shiver of the trees behind us and the shadows they cast before them, and the smell of the young bracken and the moss. Even the things we said will be forgotten, the touch of hands, the warmth, the loveliness, but never the peace that we have given to each other, never the stillness and the silence.”

I wanted to end with a trailer for the 1944 film adaptation with Joan Fontaine, but alas I couldn’t find it anywhere. So here is a clip from the 1998 BBC adaptation, which for reasons best known to itself has moved the story to the time of the Glorious Revolution and completely invented a scene. Has anyone seen this version? It doesn’t look very enticing but I do think Tara Fitzgerald is a good actor:

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.31

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The Hunters – Claire Messud (2001) 86 pages

Earlier in the month I read A Simple Tale, the first of two novellas by Claire Messud collected under the title The Hunters. I was so impressed I wanted to read more by her, so on this last day I decided to return and read the titular tale.

It is very different to the previous story, although there are thematic links, and while I didn’t love it quite so much, it definitely convinced me that Messud is a skilled, versatile writer that I should explore further.

An unnamed narrator, whose gender is never revealed, takes a flat in Kilburn for three months while they undertake some research into poetic considerations of death. (There were extended descriptions of Kilburn which as a Londoner had me rolling my eyes at the snobbery/inaccuracy but I’ll be generous and say Kilburn has changed a lot in the 22 years since this was written so maybe it was a bit less lovable in 2001).

They are recovering from a broken heart, and desire nothing more than to be left alone. In Rear Window style, the flat looks out onto other flats, and this is what most appeals:

“I was at a time in which I desired exactly that: the suggestion of society, without its actual impingement into my carefully controlled existence. This is why, also, the people flitting among their trappings in the houses opposite so appealed to me: they were at once there and not there, a sign that life continued, even if it had nothing to do with me.”

Unfortunately for the narrator, they are unable to keep a pane of glass between themselves and other people, because their downstairs neighbour arrives on their doorstep. Ridley Wandor is a woman who lives in the ground floor flat with her mother and three rabbits (the titular Hunters). She is not glamorous; she has greasy hair, indistinct features, and a worn garish shellsuit. She smells of her pets. Her awkward manner is irritating and the narrator refers to her as an “oblique suet of a woman”.

Yet Ridley has power. She explains to her neighbour that as a carer, all her clients keep dying. The narrator is fearful of her:

“As if I knew – I did know, of course I knew; whether that knowing was a premonition or a predetermination – that I would not be able to escape her. That’s assault of the doorbell, which had so set me to trembling, was but the first of many such assaults;”

I can’t say too much more about what happens for fear of spoilers, but what Messud does in the story is to brilliantly confound expectations. The echoes of well-known horror/suspense films are there: Rear Window, Misery, possibly even Psycho. The narrator falls for these tropes and takes the reader with them.

Then, the narrator is very clear in explaining, they were wrong. They met Ridley at a time when they were vulnerable, defensive and not very generous. They thought of her as an “oblique suet”; a cruel and unthinking, dehumanising conclusion. Once they are in a better place, they view the story differently. They stop falling back on tales already told and subsequently see Ridley as an individual, deserving of respect:

“Which is why, you see, it must be told. Precisely in order to transcend its storyness, to make clear that this is not the invented story of a woman who existed only in my imagination, but the real story of a flesh-and-blood, breathing, sentient creature, someone far more real than I ever wanted or allowed her to be.”

The destabilising of the narrative isn’t remotely frustrating. Rather it widens the story to demonstrate the need to see life afresh and also to remember Anaïs Nin’s assertion: “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”

The Hunters is a plea to not lose compassion at those times when we are not feeling compassionate; to be kind to those who encroach when we really want to be left alone – because we never know what is happening for someone at the times when they cross our path.

The positioning of the reader is very cleverly done in this respect. I didn’t like the narrator much at the start: snarky, judgemental, selfish. Yet as they had explained clearly, they were in a bad place, a place of pain. By the end of the story they are happier, and more pleasant as a result. So I shouldn’t be so quick to judge…

The Hunters is an evocative, sad, unnerving story that I’m certain will stay with me.

So that’s it – another month of novellas that has gone by in a flash! It was definitely looking unlikely at several points that I’d manage it but I’m glad I did. Thank you so much to everyone who has liked, commented and shared, I really do appreciate it.

It’s been great to see Simon doing his BookADayinMay posts too, and his achievement is far more impressive because he reads and posts the same day, whereas I give myself a headstart that somehow never manages to offset the panic/feeling of impending failure 😀

Last year after I’d finished I decided to read a massive tome, namely Ulysses. I thought I’d do the same this year (but first a Daphne Du Maurier novel, because I was disappointed not to manage Ali’s #DDMReadingWeek) and I’d appreciate some guidance from the lovely bookish blogosphere…

The chunksters longest languishing in the TBR are: The Magic Mountain; Parade’s End; Bleak House; Sophie’s Choice. I also have a recent acquisition of the thousand-page, single sentence Ducks, Newburyport. I think I’m tending towards Parade’s End but any and all opinions on which I should choose are welcome! If it’s Ducks… I have a seven hour train journey to Aberdeen at the end of June, so it may even get read 😀

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.30

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Four Soldiers – Hubert Mingarelli (2003 transl. Sam Taylor 2018) 155 pages

I really loved Hubert Mingarelli’s A Meal in Winter when I read it six years ago and so I was overjoyed to find a copy of Four Soldiers in my beloved local charity bookshop. This had a lot in common with its predecessor, being a sparse tale of servicemen which focussed on their humanity rather than their role in conflict. But it was resolutely its own tale too.

The four soldiers are friends thrown together by circumstance during the Russian Civil War in 1919. Resourceful, skilled Pavel, naïve gentle giant Kyabine, quiet, thoughtful Sifra and the narrator Benia. They keep each other company during the tedium of waiting for orders, close to the Romanian border:

“Because we didn’t know where we would be tomorrow. We had come out of the forest, the winter was over, but we didn’t know how much time we would stay here, nor where we would have to go next. The war wasn’t over, but as usual we didn’t know anything about the army’s operations. It was better not to think about it. We could already count ourselves lucky to have found this pond.”

What is so striking about the soldiers is how terribly young they are. We are never told their ages, but their behaviour, their lack of experience, their superstitions – all emphasise that they are little more than children caught up in something far beyond their control, for which they may have to pay the highest price.

Their concerns are ordinary, not political or idealistic. They play dice; they swim; they smoke; Pavel has nightmares; they take turns to sleep with a watch that contains a picture of a woman that they think brings them luck.

Mingarelli doesn’t seek to explain how they ended up there or what they hope for beyond it. By focussing on the present he is able to convey how caught they are by circumstance, how hope lingers but is unexpressed.  

“Barely had we finished drinking that tea before we became nostalgic for it. But, all the same, it was better than no tea at all.”

The simplicity of the plot, imagery and prose is so finely balanced. Mingarelli conveys a vital story that needs no adornment while at the same time driving home its importance and universality.

“I advanced. But I did so evermore sadly. The sadness was stronger than me. It was because of the smell of potatoes slung over my shoulder. It didn’t evoke anything precise, that smell. Not one specific event, in any case. What it evoked was just a distant time.”

Four Soldiers isn’t remotely sentimental or sensationalist, and it’s the ordinariness it depicts that makes it so devastating, and humane.

“The silence and the darkness covered us.

Then suddenly, almost in a whisper: ‘I wrote at the end that we had a good day.’

It was very strange and sweet to hear him say that, because, my God, it was true, wasn’t it? It had been a good day.”

Susan at A Life in Books, a great champion of novellas whose reviews are a significant contributor to my ever-spiralling TBR, has written about Four Soldiers here.

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.29

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The Murderess – Alexandros Papadiamantis (1903, trans. Peter Levy 1983) 127 pages

Trigger warning: mentions infanticide

I’ve long been interested in how witches are portrayed. It’s seems so often bound up with women on the edge of (patriarchal) society – single, childless, conventionally unattractive, isolated; perhaps with the suggestion of healing knowledge that threatens male medical practitioners. It’s something brilliantly sent up in the Blackadder II episode Bells where Blackadder gives up on his doctor who prescribes courses of leeches for everything, and instead visits the wilds of Putney (!) to consult the wise woman:

In The Murderess, Alexandros Papadiamantis draws on some of these stock characteristics and makes his protagonist an older woman, a mother who is also a healer, whose actions cause her to become a murderer living in wild environments. Like many ghouls, she has several names: Hadoula, Jannis Frankissa, Frankojannou.

“She provided herbs, she made ointments, she gave massages, she cured the evil eye, she put together medicine for the sick, for anaemic girls, for pregnant women and women after childbirth and for those with women’s diseases.”

At the start of the novella she is completely sleep-deprived, helping her daughter care for her sickly newborn:

“For many nights Frankojannou had permitted herself no sleep. She had willed her sore eyes open, while she kept vigil beside this little creature who had no idea what trouble she was giving, or what torture she must undergo in her turn, if she survived.”

Papadiamantis takes us back and forth in time to show the oppression of a patriarchal society. Female babies mean dowries to be found, and once married, hard lives keeping homes and raising children, often with little or no support from male spouses.

Something inside Hadoula snaps, and she kills her granddaughter, unable to contend with the life the child will have ahead of her:

“Frankojannou’s brain really had begun to smoke. She had gone out of her mind in the end. It was the consequence of her proceeding to higher matters. She leant over the cradle.”

This is the start of her killing the young female babies and children of the island. It is set on Papadiamantis’ home island of Skiathos, its beauty contrasting with the horrors:

“Below her the river cut deep through the Acheilas ravine, and its stream filled all the deep valley with soft murmurs. In appearance it was motionless and lakelike, but in reality perpetually in motion under the tall and long-tressed planes. Among mosses and bushes and ferns it prattled secretly, kissed the trunks of trees, creeping like a serpent along the length of the valley, green-coloured from leafy reflections, kissing and biting at once the rocks and the roots, a murmuring, limpid stream, full of little crabs which ran to hide in piles of sand, while a shepherd, letting little lambs graze on the dewy greenery, came to lean down over the water.”

The Murderess is carefully balanced: it doesn’t condone Hadoula but nor does it make her a monster. She is a desperate woman driven by the life she has led and the oppression she foresees for women in her society, to undertake the most monstrous of acts.

Papadiamantis makes it clear she has lost her sanity (although she continues to act by her own rationality), and also that she has guilt and regret, but also never remotely excuses or justifies what she does.

The story has a fabulist element but without detracting from Hadoula’s murders. I felt the author was drawing on centuries of storytelling to reframe the witches of folklore and ask what it was in societies that had brought them to that role in the first place?

“But mostly she was gathering herbs to forget the grief which tormented her.”

A challenging and haunting tale.

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.28

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La Bastarda – Trifonia Melibea Obono (2016 trans. Lawrence Schimel 2018) 88 pages

My Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge is getting more difficult – but definitely possible – the closer I get to finishing, because I decided I’d only count books written by a person from that country, rather than just set there. This means I’m dependent on what is available in translation. So I was excited to come across La Bastarda, written by an author from Equatorial Guinea, and grateful to The Feminist Press for publishing it.

I didn’t realise until I’d finished it and googled further, that it’s a famous novella, banned in Equatorial Guinea and with its own Wikipedia page. It’s a wonderful read, so evocative and with a clear and compelling narrative voice. (The English translation also has a really interesting afterword by the historian Abosede George.)

The story is told by Okomo, who lives with her grandparents in a village close to the border with Gabon. The family is polygamous which makes the home crowded and busy, but she is isolated due to the circumstances of her birth:

“My mother got pregnant when she was nineteen and died while giving birth, her death brought about by witchcraft. From that moment I was declared a bastarda – a bastard daughter. I had been born before my father paid dowry in exchange for my mother. That’s why society looked at me with contempt and people called me ‘the daughter of an unmarried Fang woman’ or ‘the daughter of no man’.”

As an older teenager she is beginning to question the life mapped out for her and what she wants. She is keen to locate her father but this is absolutely forbidden by her grandfather Osá who lectures her on the history of the Fang people and her responsibilities:

“[My grandmother] told me to ask Osá if there were any women in our tribe since he had failed to mention any in his collection of heroes, but I didn’t obey.”

Okomo isn’t interested in her appearance or in marrying a man, running a home and having children, all of which are expected of her. She knows she may have an ally in her mother’s brother, the only person who has ever shown her any affection. But he is somewhat ostracised too:

“Uncle Marcelo was an isolated man who lived outside of society because he was a fam e mina or a ‘man-woman’ the men of the tribe accused him of this both in public and in private.”

While Okomo is trying to work all this out, she is drawn into the sphere of three older girls, and discovers her sexuality. She falls in love with Dina, who reciprocates her feelings. But in a small village, where same-sex relationships are taboo, theirs is a love with great risk attached to it.

La Bastarda is a tense narrative where the dangers for the girls and for Marcelo are made very clear. But it is also a story of first love, coming of age, self-discovery and the nurturing of chosen families. It addresses huge issues in such a short space without ever losing sight of the individual characters. A finely balanced story of defiance and resilience.

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.27

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The Stepford Wives – Ira Levin (1972) 139 pages

Earlier in the month when I read The War of the Worlds, I mentioned I rarely read sci-fi. If I rarely read sci-fi, I never read horror. So this is definitely the month for going outside my comfort zone and learning to love it 😊

The Stepford Wives is such a well-known classic that I’m assuming everyone knows what the story is. I did, and didn’t diminish the horror or the tension in any way. I will keep this review very brief though, to try and avoid spoilers as far as possible…

The story is told from the point of view of Joanna, a photographer with a young family, who moves to the insular suburb:

“She wished: that they would be happy in Stepford. That Pete and Kim would do well in school, and that she and Walter would find good friends and fulfilment. That he wouldn’t mind the commuting – though the whole idea of moving had been his in the first place. That the lives of all four of them would be enriched, rather than diminished, as she had feared, by leaving the city – the filthy, crowded, crime-ridden, but so alive city.”

It takes Joanna longer than she hoped to settle in to Stepford. None of the women in the town are very sociable, spending endless hours cleaning their homes which they claim leaves them little time for anything else:

“That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing the suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.”

She does make one friend Bobbie, who is determined to leave the area:

“Is that your idea of the ideal community? I went into Norwood to get my hair done for your party; I saw a dozen women who were rushed and sloppy and irritated and alive; I wanted to hug every one of them!”

Meanwhile her husband Walter seems quite content, joining the local Men’s Association with the other local patriarchs who seem determined to keep clearly delineated lines between the sexes.

Slowly the realisation of what is happening in Stepford dawns on Joanna. She is resistant to the gaslighting that surrounds her – but it is already too late?

The Stepford Wives is truly horrifying. Not only because the tension is built so expertly by Ira Levin (the novella form seems particularly suited to this) and not only because of the actual events portrayed. But because – as the blistering introduction by Chuck Palahnuik in my edition makes completely clear – we may all already be living in Stepford…

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.26

/ madamebibilophile / 18 Comments

Nights at the Alexandra – William Trevor (1987) 71 pages

Many of you will be aware that Cathy at 746 Books and Kim at Reading Matters are hosting their wonderful A Year with William Trevor reading event throughout 2023.

Earlier this month, Cathy reviewed Trevor’s novella Nights at the Alexandra, and it sounded so completely wonderful I knew I’d have to get to it before the end of May. I did and it was all I anticipated.

It opens with 58 year-old Harry remembering his life as a young adult, just about to leave school, during World War II. The Messingers – she English, he German – have moved to Ireland to avoid the prejudice their relationship would encounter in their countries of birth. She is much younger than her husband, and glamourous.

“I remember that more distinctly than any other moment in my life. She was already in the car when she spoke, and her tone of voice was not one normally employed when making a request. With a gentle imperiousness, she commanded what she wished, and before she drove away she glanced at me once, a smile flickering across her thin features.”

Harry is from a Protestant family, living in a Catholic town. He is expected to follow his father into the timberyard business – something his elder sister has already done by working in the office and which she bitterly resents.

“The family atmosphere was as it always was: my grandmothers silent in their dislike of one another, my brothers sniggering, my mother tired. Annie resentful, my father ebullient after an hour or so in the back bar of Viney’s hotel.”

Harry does not want to follow his father in any way. He is desperate for something else, without knowing what it is. The Messingers – particularly Mrs Messinger – with their large house, cigarettes and tea, affection and childlessness, stories and difference, offer this to Harry.

They offer him further escape when Mr Messinger decides to build the titular cinema in the town, named after his wife. Harry is able to have a job, and refuse the timberyard once and for all.

Nights at the Alexandra has such a subtle and finely-wrought tone. The relationships between the characters are beautifully evoked and in less-skilled hands could have easily descended into cliché. Instead Trevor gives us a story of human lives with all their pain and love, longing and helplessness, that somehow grants his characters some peace too. There are also moments of deadpan humour:

“My father lent his observations weight through his slow delivery of them, his tone suggesting revelations of import yet to come. But invariably this promise remained unfulfilled.”

Now, it could be said Reader, that my tears are not worth very much. I’ve always been a crier anyway, and currently I’m bereaved and pre-menopausal, so it doesn’t take much to set me off. But I wept at the end of Nights at the Alexandra. It was so completely realised, so moving and poetic, unsentimental and sympathetic. Perfection.

Novella a Day in May 2023 – No.25

/ madamebibilophile / 25 Comments

Ms Ice Sandwich – Mieko Kawakami (2013 trans. Louise Heal Kawai 2017) 92 pages

A nine-year old boy tells the story of a short period of time where he has a crush on the young woman who works at the sandwich shop in the local shopping centre. He never speaks to her but lines up to stare at her and buy a sandwich.

“‘Ms Ice Sandwich’ is a name I made-up, of course. I thought of it minute I first saw her. Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyelids are always painted with a thick layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our freezer since last summer. There’s one more awesome thing about her – if you watch when she looks down, there’s a sharp dark line above her eyes, as if when she closed her eyes, someone started to draw on two extra eyes with a felt-tip pen but stopped halfway. It’s the coolest thing.”

The story could so easily be creepy or at least unnerving but it really isn’t. He’s young, quite lonely, and navigating that period of older childhood as friends change and he tries to work out who he is. His mother is distracted, his elderly grandmother is extremely frail, and his father has died.

Child narrators are so difficult to get right, but I really thought Kawakami pulled it off. The boy uses the striking imagery that children sometimes access “Bicycles are lined up like mechanical goats.” without it feeling too knowing for someone of his age. I thought this was done especially well when he is trying to describe his feelings for Ms Ice Sandwich:

“Like when you’re holding a cat and you touch it soft belly. Or sticking your finger in a jar of jam and stirring, then slowly sinking in all the rest of your fingers. Or licking the sweet condensed milk at the bottom of your bowl of strawberries. Or when a blanket brushes the top of your feet. Or when butter turns transparent when it melts over your pancakes. As I stand gazing at Ms Ice Sandwich, all of these things are happening to me, one on top of the other, right there.”

The boy doesn’t try to build a relationship with Ms Ice Sandwich and I think it would have lessened the story if he did. Instead we see his gently burgeoning friendship with classmate Tutti, who is also bereaved for a parent, and some very touching scenes between him and his grandma, so delicately realised.

“The little bit of golden sun that shines through the shoji screens on the window lights up the white areas of Grandma’s quilt, making a faint shadow of leaves, and each time the wind blows outside, the shadow pattern of leaves shakes a little bit. I go over to Grandma and I hold my breath for a moment. The room goes very quiet.”

Ms Ice Sandwich captures a particular time in a young boy’s life with sensitivity and compassion. By capturing ordinary moments between people so precisely it demonstrates something universal that carries far beyond childhood.