short stories

“Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.” (Anton Chekhov)

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Thank you to everyone who left such kind and encouraging comments on my last post, I really do appreciate it. My brain is feeling less fried from anxiety at impending unemployment, but the slog of job applications means I still didn’t manage as much reading or as many posts for September as I would have liked!

Still, this is one final contribution to Short Story September hosted by Lisa at ANZ Lit Lovers. It’s been such a great event and good encouragement to take some of the short story volumes off my shelf, which always seem to languish in favour of novels.

This one is a perfect example, as I’ve really enjoyed the novels by Deborah Levy that I’ve read (Hot Milk, Swimming Home and The Man Who Saw Everything) and also her volumes of autobiography. She is so precise and incisive, but never cold, and has a way with startling imagery. All of which are definite strengths in short story form, and I was not disappointed by the ten stories in Black Vodka (2013), published by the ever-wonderful AndOtherStories.

Lisa wisely asked us to focus on one story in a collection, which is a great approach as writing about short story collections can be a real challenge. However, for this collection my tired brain struggled to formulate a post on just one, due to Levy’s precise way of writing. It’s very difficult to go into any detail with the stories in this collection, so I’ll just attempt to give a flavour of a few.

The collection is thematically linked through explorations of love in many guises. It opens with the titular story of an advertising executive falling for his colleague’s archaeologist girlfriend.

“There is nothing that feels as good as breathing near someone you desire. The past of my youth was not a good place to be. Is it strange then, that I am attracted to a woman who is obsessed with digging up the past?”

The man is vulnerable and the story describes the delicate moves towards one another made by two people unsure of each other and themselves. The fragility of the self is another recurring theme, as people struggle to sustain identities.

In Vienna, again there is a vulnerable man, unsure of where he lives or who he is after the disintegration of his marriage. His lover, the married Magret, is business-like and forthright. There is a sad humour in the contrast between his fragility and her determination not to be involved beyond the physical act.

“He nods, as if he is a secretary taking notes from an inscrutable Executive Director who wears purple lipstick to frighten the more timid of her staff. She rips the silver foil from a carton of langoustines and slides them into the microwave that still has the price taped to the side. He watches her bend her long neck to check the minutes and seconds and then fold her arms against the pearl-grey cashmere that hugs her small breasts. While she waits she tells him she has no idea why her husband has bought her a microwave.”

While most of the stories are grounded in the everyday – however unsettling that is, especially when feelings are overwhelming – Cave Girl has a slight magical realism edge as a brother tries to cope with his sister changed beyond all recognition.

“My sister Cass thinks that ice cubes in the shape of hearts will change her life.”

A highly readable collection, inventive and moving, sad and funny, where nothing is tied up neatly.  

To end, a surprisingly fully-clothed performance from Eugene Hütz and Gogol Bordello 😀

“You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.” (Albert Einstein)

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It’s been hugely stressful few weeks, which meant my reading has fallen off a cliff. I didn’t get to my final read for #WITMonth but I hope to at some point (Magda Szabo’s The Door, where the bookmark has sat at page 50 for four weeks, despite my really enjoying it), and we’re two-thirds through September where I’ve failed to take part in SpinsterSeptember or ShortStorySeptember, both of which I was really looking forward to.

However… I have handed in my notice at work now, with no job to go to…

And while this is incredibly anxiety-provoking I think it speaks to it being the right decision that my reading has resumed (imperfectly, but resumed!) and I’m catching up on the blogosphere too 😊

So, this is a contribution to Short Story September hosted by Lisa at ANZ Lit Lovers. Hopefully I’ll get to some more of the short stories languishing in the TBR, even if it will be fewer than I planned. Do head over to Lisa’s blog to find out more, and join in!

The Casino by Margaret Bonham (1948), a collection of short stories which is Persephone No.48 and features an enlightening forward by Bonham’s daughter, Cary Bazalgette. Lisa has asked us to focus on one story, so I’m just going to focus on the titular one, but the whole collection is really a strong one.

A group of teenage girls are excited and trepidatious at the thought of going unaccompanied to the casino in the French seaside town in which they are holidaying. Bonham captures perfectly that time of life when you are not quite an adult and are impatient to experience the adult world, while finding the whole prospect terrifying and wishing you could be at home in your pyjamas.

“In the dusk, Giselle waited outside the iron gates. Her frock was pink and stuck out like a cake-frill, she undulated and giggled. In a line of four they went down the street towards the sea, past Sainte Claire where Giselle waved and Valentine looked sideways at seeing M. Chabouillard’s face a round whiskered disapproving moon at the window. Between Kitty’s steel confidence and Valentine’s detachment, Rhys walked with her eyes on the heaving channel, thinking of ruin.”

In a short space Bonham draws fully recognisable portraits of the girls. Kitty is determined to get on with adult life, Rhys is scared by the whole thing, Giselle naïve and child-like, Valentine somewhat indifferent and preoccupied with her painting.

The evening is one of anticipation, and of course it is an anti-climax:

“The restaurant was half-full, stuck with pink paper roses in white and gilt trellis. At the far end a damp, pink band played, the floor was cleared for dancing, the tables crowded round the walls. Kitty looked sulky, and ordered coffee without asking if anyone wanted something else, and at this Rhys was very much relieved, for her anxious fears had drawn a table covered with bottles of brandy, the bill paid by a leering stranger and Kitty the receipt. In her dark-red dress that gave her no pleasure she sat breathing carefully with her back to the wall.”

My comparable teenage experiences were of south London pubs and horrible West End nightclubs 😀 Yet this description of a provincial French casino really evoked for me the disappointment of the banal detail found in something you’ve been simultaneously dreading and enticed by when you’re a young adult.

It’s the perfect story with which to start the collection. Margaret Bonham really understands the art of the short story. Not a word is wasted in her sharply observed tales, and she writes with a light touch that belies her acute psychological observations.

To end, regular readers will be familiar with who I turn to in times of stress (although I must say I’ve been really touched by the unwavering support of my friends. There were some I put off telling because I thought they’d say “What the hell are you thinking???” They didn’t, and I feel quite teary about it all. Almost worth handing in my notice for!) Now back to David:

“I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.” (Rudolph Valentino)

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I’m going through a bit of a reading slump at the moment, not a terrible one as I’m finding I can focus on my comfort reads, but I’m struggling with anything that needs more concentration. It’s very frustrating.

I wanted to take part in August’s Women in Translation Month, so I was hoping to recover my reading mojo in time. Having enjoyed All Our Yesterdays and The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg previously, I thought her direct style would suit my addled brain well. Valentino (1957 transl. Avril Bardoni 1987)) is essentially a short story, just 62 pages in my edition (a Daunt Books reissue) and I whizzed through it on a short train journey to visit a friend in Sussex.

The story is narrated by Caterina, sister of the titular character:

“My father believed that [Valentino] was destined to become a man of consequence. There was little enough reason to believe this, but he believed it all the same and had done ever since Valentino was a small boy and perhaps found it difficult to break the habit.”

Valentino is vain and feckless, entirely undeserving of the faith his parents put in him and the sacrifices the whole family have made to finance his medical studies. He fritters away his time and routinely gets engaged to ‘teenagers wearing jaunty little berets’.

So when he announces his latest engagement, no-one takes it particularly seriously:

“It had happened so often already that when he announced he was getting married within the month nobody believed him, and my mother cleaned the dining room wearily and put on the grey silk reserved for her pupils’ examinations at the Conservatory and for meeting Valentino’s perspective brides.”

However, this engagement to Maddelena sticks. She is older, unattractive and incredibly rich. Valentino’s parents are heartbroken at his avariciousness being made so apparent. Caterina is more equanimous and she soon realises that Maddelena is caring and hard-working. Valentino is not worthy of his bride.

“It was not easy to explain to my sister Clara the turn that events had taken. That a woman had appeared with lashings of money and a moustache who was willing to pay for the privilege of marrying Valentino and that he had agreed.”

What follows is a carefully realised study of the family members and their dynamics, particularly around Valentino’s marriage. Caterina’s direct voice conveys the hurt Valentino inflicts, not through cruelty but through utter obliviousness and self-focus, without demonising him.

In such a short space, Ginzburg achieves a really moving portrait of familial relationships and how these exist under the pressures exerted by society.  There is sadness in the tale but also a deadpan humour. Caterina presents the situation without judgement, enabling a real depth to the characterisation.

Ginzburg is such an intelligent, insightful writer who never seeks to alienate readers with her cleverness. She presents knotty complexity with a deceptive simplicity of style. If you’ve never read her, Valentino is a good place to start.

“My emotions at that time were neither profound nor melancholic and I was confident that sooner or later things would improve for me.”

To end, Rudolph Valentino playing ‘a youthful libertine’ and dancing a tango, over 100 years ago:

“Two English meals a day would have done for me.” (Antal Szerb, The Pendragon Legend)

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This month I started off my reading for Kaggsy and Lizzy’s #ReadIndies event with an author that the event had led me to discover last year: Gertrude Trevelyan. So it seemed apt to end this month’s reading with another author #ReadIndies had introduced me to last year: Antal Szerb. In 2024 reading Love in Bottle in February led to Journey by Moonlight for the 1937 Club in April. This time I’m looking at The Pendragon Legend (1934, transl. Len Rix 2006) which is published by the always reliable Pushkin Press.

The Pendragon Legend is Szerb’s first novel, and utterly bonkers. As I was reading it I remembered why I had enjoyed my previous Szerb reads so much: his wit, fun, intelligence without superiority, gentle ribbing without malice, make him such a joy.

The narrator Janos Bátky is a young scholar who spends his time hanging around the British Library Reading Room. Luckily for him, he has no need for money:

“My nature is to spend years amassing the material for a great work and, when everything is at last ready, I lock it away in a desk drawer and start something new.”

His current interest is Rosicrucians: “Nothing interests me more than the way people relate emotionally to the abstract.”  This ancient secretive organisation’s interests include: “Changing base metals into gold, deliberately prolonging the life of the body, the ability to see things at a distance, and a kabbalistic system for solving all mysteries.”

This leads to him being introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd who invites Janos to stay at Pendragon Castle and make use of his library. Janos heads off to Wales with some acquaintances in tow, unheeding the warnings of a mysterious telephone call… (why do people never heed mysterious telephonic warnings??)

Shortly into his stay there are both earthly concerns when bullets are stolen from his gun and metaphysical concerns where he seems to be haunted:

“Just to be clear on this: not for a moment did I think it could be any sort of ghostly apparition. While it is a fact that English castles are swarming with ghosts, they are visible only to natives – certainly not to anyone from Budapest.”

(This isn’t the only time Janos confuses England and Wales, despite the fact he encounters similar ignorance when people insist he must be German and that Hungary doesn’t exist: “’Come off it. Those places were made up by Shakespeare.’”)

There are femme fatales, reluctant heroes, knowing castle staff… my favourite character was the capable and blunt Lene Kretsch:

“This was how our friendship began: I set myself on fire and she put me out. I’d been sitting by the hearth with The Times. I’ve never been able to handle English newspapers – apparently one has to be born with the knack of folding these productions into the microscopic dimensions achieved by the natives – and, as I flicked a page over, the entire room filled with newsprint.”

And so The Pendragon Legend is a mystery, a thriller, a Gothic ghost story, a fable, and with the arrival of the Earl’s niece Cynthia, a romance, despite Janos’ callowness:

“I can never feel much attraction to a woman whom I consider clever – it feels too much like courting a man.”  

Maybe Cynthia has more tolerance for him as she comes from a family where: “At most, the Pendragons tolerate women within the limits of marriage, and even then without much enthusiasm.”

Szerb satirises romance along with all the other tropes and genres he employs, but always with affection and never with any disdain. Somehow Janos and assorted friends bumble their way through the mystery, despite the poisonings, blackmail and hauntings which dog their steps.

My one reservation is that it became a bit too esoteric towards the end, but this is a matter of personal taste and feels a bit mean-spirited in the face of such an affectionate and fun tale.

If you fancy a pacy, ridiculous, learned adventure, The Pendragon Legend is for you.

“I was filled with the tenderness I always feel – and which nothing can match – when I encounter so many books together. At moments like these I long to wallow, to bathe in them, to savour their wonderful, dusty, old-book odours, to inhale them through my very pores.”

“If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.” (Margaret Atwood)

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This is the second of my two posts for Margaret Atwood Reading Month 2024 (#MARM2024) hosted by Marcie at Buried in Print.

I really wanted to get this posted in time, but those of you who read my previous post will know I’m currently getting over labyrinthitis. So the same disclaimer applies: please bear with me and apologies in advance for inadequacy/incoherence!

Old Babes in the Wood (2023) is a collection of short stories split into three sections. Tig & Nell contains three stories about the titular couple, My Evil Mother contains eight stories and the final section returns to Nell & Tig with four stories.

I find it hard enough to write about short stories even when my ears aren’t making life extremely trying, so I’m just going to focus on the final section for this post. The Nell & Tig stories explore what it means to be part of a long-established, now elderly couple and the challenges of aging, illness and bereavement.

These issues form a large part of my working life, and I thought Atwood nailed it with her characteristic insight, wit, compassion, and lack of sentimentality. I’m not one for biographical readings generally, but it is worth noting that Graeme Gibson, Atwood’s partner of 45 years, died in 2019 and Old Babes in the Wood is dedicated to him.

In A Dusty Lunch, Nell is sorting through Tig’s father’s belongings. The Jolly Old Brigadier – JOB – fought in the war and covered his PTSD with relentless joviality which didn’t quite fool anyone.

“The Brig had been shunted off to peacetime babysitting, a headquarters here, a headquarters there, a defence attaché in Washington decorating cocktail parties, but for what? Soldiers in peacetime are superfluous: celebrated once a year for something they once were, avoided in the here and now for what they have become.”

As Nell sorts through his belongings she realises the myriad stories that make up a life, and how many remain unspoken and therefore unrealised by even those closest to the person. She has no idea what to do with the deeply meaningful accoutrements of a life that hold no meaning for her, including the ghosts that haunted the Brig.

“What about the silent people, some alive, some dead, who sit in armchairs but aren’t really there, […] Because they’re part of it too.”

This will resonate with anyone who has had to sort through the material contents of another’s life. By placing it with the war generation, further emphasis is given to silent enduring traumas and the cost of choices made for domestic life in peacetime.

Widows is an epistolary episode, capturing the inadequacy of responses to the bereaved as Nell writes to her friend Stevie:

“You were always a well-meaning busy body. I don’t fault you for it – you have a kind heart, you are filled to the brim with good intentions, but I don’t want any casseroles or oblique, probing questions, or visits from professionals, or nieces talking me into buying an assisted-care condo. And no, I do not wish to go on a cruise.”

And really, responses can only ever be inadequate in the swirling disorientation of immense grief:

“Time has ceased to be linear, with life events and memories in a chronological row, like beads on a string. It’s the strangest feeling, or experience, or rearrangement. I’m not sure I can explain it to you.”

In Wooden Box, Nell is working out how to manage the demands of the everyday, when her whole life has been entirely disrupted by Tig’s death:

“It’s like being a student again: the same disorganisation and fecklessness and sudden bursts of intention, the same formless anxiety, the same bare bones meals. How easily she has slipped back sixty years, give or take: grazing, dubious leftovers, no ceremony.”

The titular box is one Tig made in school, with a few bits and pieces in it, which evade Nell as to their meaning. She is baffled and overwhelmed as to what to do with them, the box symbolic of her entire widowhood.

The final story which gives its name to the collection, Nell and her sister Lizzie are sorting through their childhood summer cabin, layers of memories alongside layers of dust and ancient belongings. In line with the fairytale title, Nell recognises her magical thinking, whereby Tig is both absent and ever-present.

“It’s an optical illusion, the retreating figure dwindling, growing smaller and smaller and then disappearing in the distance. Those retreating stay the same size. They aren’t really diminished, they aren’t really gone. It’s just that you can’t see them.”

Old Babes in the Wood is as accomplished as you’d expect. The collection overall is a varied one, including elements of sci-fi, fairytale and even whimsy (in The Dead Interview Atwood communes with George Orwell via Mrs Verity, a medium.) Atwood completely understands the form of whatever she turns her hand to. She always has something interesting to say and she does so with humane understanding.

To end, Margaret Atwood reading one of the earlier Tig & Nell stories, Morte de Smudgie:

“We may safely assume that all tales are fiction.” (Margaret Atwood)

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This is the first of what I’m hoping will be two posts for Margaret Atwood Reading Month 2024 (#MARM2024) hosted by Marcie at Buried in Print, as I aim to read the two short story collections I have in the TBR.

Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales (2014) turned out to be perfect autumn reading with its edge of darkness, verging on Gothic at times.

The first three tales are connected. Alphinland sees fantasy writer Constance negotiate heavy  snow after the death of her husband; in Revenant, the poet she loved in her youth, Gavin, tries to manage the frustrations and isolations of older age; in Dark Lady one of his lovers with whom he cheated on Constance is back living with her twin brother.

All of these are grounded in reality, but Atwood weaves through touches of unreality to destabilise any certainty the reader has about what is being portrayed. Constance’s fantasy world is entirely real to her, and there are hints that it is an effective means of controlling people. But is this psychological or metaphysical?

“How did he manage to work his way out of the metaphor she’s kept him bottled up in for all these years?”

Atwood’s portrayal of Constance and Gavin allows for some light satire as to the vagaries of literary trends, and the uses writers make of their art. Gavin enjoyed the male privilege of 1960s bohemianism and is disappointed that the world has moved on alongside his aging body:

“His regret is that he isn’t a lecherous old man, but he wishes he were. He wishes he still could be. How to describe the deliciousness of ice cream when you can no longer taste it?”

Dark Lady portrays the life of an aging muse, using the Shakespeare reference to make Jorrie a slightly ghoulish presence. As her brother Tin reflects on her appearance:

“at least he’s been able to stop her from dyeing [her hair] jet black: way too Undead with her present day skin tone, which is lacking in glow despite the tan-coloured foundation and the sparkly bronze mineral-elements powder she so assiduously applies, the poor deluded wretch.”

“He has to keep reminding her not to halt the sparkly bronze procedure halfway down her neck: otherwise her head will look sewed on.”

Gavin’s nostalgia for the sexual politics of the 1960s is given further short shrift in the titular tale. I was delighted to learn that the idea came about on an Artic cruise, where Atwood’s late husband started to work out how to murder someone on a ship and get away with it. Atwood decided to finish the tale and the logistical details are closely observed.

All the tales are memorable, and the collection finishes on one that feels truly terrifying as an external threat builds towards vulnerable people in a nursing home. Like the tales that have preceded it, Torching the Dusties is touched with the fantastical while staying rooted in the recognisable. Wilma has Charles Bonnet syndrome, hallucinating due to her failing eyesight:

“she locates the phone in her peripheral vision, ignores the ten or twelve little people who are skating on the kitchen counter in long fur-bordered velvet cloaks and silver muffs, and picks it up.”

Atwood relentlessly builds the tension in the tale, ending it on a jovial note that is brilliantly inappropriate.

There’s so much here for Atwood fans to enjoy: the sharp observations (particularly on ageing), the wry societal commentary; the mischievous humour, and of course the fierce intellect. She’s clearly having fun here and encouraging her readers to have fun too. I’m looking forward to the other collection I have to read, Old Babes in the Wood (2023).

#WITMonth: My Pen is the Wing of A Bird (Maclehose Press)

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Continuing my plan to focus on countries I’ve yet to visit on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge for this year’s Women in Translation Month, I was pleased to find an anthology of short stories from Afghanistan in my oft-visited local charity bookshop. I later found out it was the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women translated into English.

My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (2022) brings together twenty-three stories by eighteen women (ten of whom have since left Afghanistan) as part of the UNTOLD Narratives project. The stories are translated by a variety of translators from the Pashto and Dari languages.

This will be a really short review (for me!) because if I find writing about short story collections by one author difficult, writing about an anthology by different writers is nearly impossible. So I’ll just say from the start that I found this collection powerful, evocative, moving. It was a compelling read and I’d urge anyone to get hold of a copy.

Often short story collections – even by the same author – can seem patchy but I thought this collection was remarkably consistent. The stories focus on the daily life for women and children in Afghanistan, some set in the past and evoking the country’s long history of conflict, but most with a contemporary setting. I’ll just pick out a few moments to hopefully give a sense of the collection.

There are several stories which are a tough read; domestic violence in particular features in a few. But a sense of hope and resilience pervades. In A Common Language by Fatema Haidari (transl. from Dari by Dr Zubair Popalzi), young female workers leave their hard-won jobs in support of a colleague who is sexually harassed, realistic but still hopeful about their chances of finding further employment. This is immediately followed by The Late Shift by Sharifa Pasun (transl. from Pashto by Zarghuna Kargar) where Sanga, a young working mother, continues to go to her work as a newsreader in 1985, despite the falling bombs all around her.

“Before she entered the studio, she took off her shoes and put on the special sandals that were kept in a metal cupboard. The people in charge of the studios didn’t want anyone bringing in dust that could harm the equipment […] The studios were soundproof; no sound from explosions could enter from outside.”

There are a couple of stories dedicated to those who have died. Blossom by Zainab Akhlaqi (transl. from Dari by Dr Negeen Kargar) is one, dedicated to Afghan schoolgirls and the students who died at Sayed ul-Shuhada high school on 8 May 2021. Through the story, the narrator comes to realise the importance of her friend’s question: “If a person never reads a book how can he change?”  This is carefully explored and never clunky.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler as such but do skip the next bit where I talk about the ending if you wish! The final lines of the story are simple yet intensely moving:

“I put on my black school uniform and white scarf and filled my bag with notebooks. I cut a fresh branch of blossom from our garden and went to school.”

My Pillow’s Journey of Eleven Thousand, Eight Hundred and Seventy-Six kilometres by Farangis Elyassi (transl. from Dari by Dr Zubair Popalzai) is one of the few stories set somewhere other than Afghanistan and shows that leaving your home country can be an ambivalent experience. The narrator moves to a life in the United States, but struggles for the first time in her life with insomnia. She is convinced it is linked to the loss of her comfortable pillow, made for her by her mother. Slowly she realises it is more complex (again, skip the next quote to avoid spoilers):

“my sleep was bound to the warm embrace of my country, it was bound to visiting my beloved mother, it was bound to the chatter I shared with my sisters, to the friendship and silliness so I shared with my brother, to the laughter I enjoyed with my friends. My peaceful sleep was because of the small service I used to do for my country, because of my streets, because of a sense of freedom one can feel only in one’s country.”

Looking at the UNTOLD Narratives website, I can see that this month they published My Dear Kabul, a collective diary from the women who wrote My Pen is the Wing of a Bird. It sounds unmissable.

“In the besieged city everything is unusual but everything is at the same time ordinary.” (Alma Lazarevska)

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For this year’s Women in Translation Month I’m trying to focus on countries I’ve yet to visit on my Around the World in 80 Books reading challenge. Today I’m off to Bosnia and Herzegovina via Death in the Museum of Modern Art by Alma Lazarevska (1996 transl. Celia Hawkesworth 2014) published by Istros Books.

Death in the Museum of Modern Art is a collection of six stories set during the siege of Sarajevo, although Lazarevska never names the “besieged city” that features in all the tales. Lazarevska is a Bosnian writer and survivor of the siege.

I always find it really hard to write about short story collections, so I’ll just focus on the opening and closing tales.  In Dafna Pehfogl Crosses the Bridge between There and Here, the titular character reflects on her long. “unlucky”, “clumsy” life, starting when the maid burned the last coffee listening to her mother’s labour screams. Dafna is something of a scapegoat for her family and remained unmarried as her suitors weren’t smart enough for her family. Now in old age she finds herself alone in the war-torn city. Her family on “the other side” have arranged her passage to safety.

“She stepped boldly and decisively. Freed from other people’s gaze and lengthy sighs. Her feet were light on the deserted bridge between there and here.”

This is the only story in the collection written in the third person, but it didn’t distance Dafna in any way. I really hoped she’d make it to safety…

The final story, Death in the Museum of Modern Art has a dry humour to it. The narrator is answering questions that will form part of an exhibition at MoMA, including “How would you like to die?”

“I would have liked to tell him about that terrible feeling I have of being late… the feeling that I have being overtaken and I’m losing my sense of being present. Neither here, nor there.”

Without heavy judgement, Lazarevska demonstrates how the lived experience of war is being simplified and packaged up for art consumers. The impossibility of the questionnaires even beginning to capture anything meaningful from such a situation.

“But for an American, one ‘easy’ is the same as another. Hence a visitor to the Museum of Modern Art may read that my friend the writer wanted to die easily. He understands that, but the writer does not. That word introduces confusion into the writer’s answer. Can wishes of this kind be expressed in a foreign language, particularly one that does not distinguish one ‘easily’ from another?”

Lazarevska writes in a constrained style, both tonally and structurally. She doesn’t waste a word and has a real command of the short story form – I thought the six stories in this collection were all equally strong.

Lazarevska writes about the siege of Sarajevo in a way that is evocative but not overly emotive, trusting that the circumstances are extraordinary and shocking enough that they don’t need embellishment. Her focus is broadly domestic, looking at how ordinary lives find ways to carry on. The result is a compelling and memorable collection that places the reader alongside the characters as they hold onto their humanity through the most brutal experience.

“The hand I write with his healed. If any new questions should ever arrive, I shall write my answers myself. I’m writing all of this with my own hand.”

“While there is life there is always the chance that something might happen.” (Antal Szerb)

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This week I’m focussing on Pushkin Press as part of Kaggsy and Lizzy’s #ReadIndies event in order to read four books that have long been in the TBR. For this final post, my read is Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb (1922-1943, transl. Len Rix 2013)

This was a really interesting collection, because the stories are presented chronologically and there’s a big gap whereby Szerb’s style changes considerably.

The first three stories are from 1922-23. Ajandok’s Betrothal, The White Magus, and The Tyrant all have a fable-like quality. Told in the third person, they are set in a timeless period and within realities that verge on mythical. While they were very well written, and diverting enough, I didn’t find them hugely interesting.

The rest of the stories are from 1932-1943 and these I found much more original and compelling. The first is Cynthia, a fragment which Pushkin Press omitted in a previous edition as Szerb probably didn’t intend it for publication. It begins:

“When they threw me out of Cambridge for my poor taste in neckties and generally immoral conduct, I enrolled at University College London, whose chief claim to fame (though they kept this private) was that its Dean was obliged, as a matter of principle, to see off any clergymen who dared set foot on the premises.”

I immediately felt hopeful that this change in tone and setting would be much more to my liking 😀

The tale itself is told from the point of view of an unpleasant but believable lothario who doesn’t seem to like women very much. This persona recurs through some of the other stories. In A Dog Called Madelon, a man laments that he has never been able to sleep with aristocratic women, despising the shop assistant he is with:

“He had been reflecting on the way his whole life had been frittered away on a procession of frightful little Jennys, when ever since boyhood he had yearned for a Lady Rothesay. History held the sort of erotic charge for him that others found in actresses’ dressing rooms – a truly great passion required three or four centuries historical background at the very least.”

In Musings in the Library, an “anti-Don Juan” who finds “women rarely please me” manages to completely fumble a fledgling love affair.

What stops these characters from being completely alienating to the reader is firstly, the wry humour that runs through the stories, and secondly the deep inadequacy of the protagonists. They are not meant to be heroic in any way, but rather deluded and sad. The stories all end in their failure, often with ironic circumstances.

In the titular tale, Szerb returns to mythology with Sir Lancelot and his love for Guinevere, but this is markedly different to the previous myth-like stories. Love in a Bottle has a more individual, authentic voice to the narration, and the humour of the contemporary-set tales is evident here too.

Szerb seems to view romantic love in these stories with some scepticism, but not disdain. It is the flawed characters which mean love is never fully realised, rather than problems with the idea itself. In fact, there is a feeling of hope towards love in the way Szerb consistently returns to the theme, but it is the humans involved who make it become ridiculous.

His tone is never bitter though, and he doesn’t judge his characters too harshly. To me Szerb seemed to be highlighting foibles while suggesting no-one was above them.

I also enjoyed Fin de Siècle where Szerb seemed to be having a lot of fun satirising writers. Thus Dr Johnson is noted for his “immortal banalities” and a group of writers who gather together include:

“Lionel Johnson, who would deliver his observations about the weather in the manner of a revelation: ‘There was a thick fog in Chelsea this morning.’ he would regularly announce, and glare balefully around the room, his hand clapped on some invisible sword.”

The humour, intelligence and readable style of the stories in Love in a Bottle has made me keen to explore Szerb more. Fortuitously I have Journey by Moonlight lined up for Kaggsy and Simon’s 1937 Club which is running 15-22 April – can’t wait!

“Looking back on the blissful days of my youth, as they begin to slip away from me, I can see now the best of them were those spent in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.”

“My world was small and terrible.” (Isaac Babel)

/ madamebibilophile / 20 Comments

This week I’m focussing on Pushkin Press as part of Kaggsy and Lizzy’s #ReadIndies event to finally read four books that have long been in the TBR. For this third post today my read is Odessa Stories by Isaac Babel (1916-1937 transl. Boris Dralyuk 2016).

The Introduction to this volume by translator Boris Dralyuk is really informative and provides some fascinating context to Babel’s writing. Odessa was a booming port when Babel was born in 1894; in 1900 around 140,000 of its 400,000 population was Jewish. Babel was part of a well-to-do family but was drawn to Odessa’s underbelly, writing stories about the legendary gangsters of the city.

Dralyuk also explains about translating the melting-pot language of Odessa, so I highly recommend reading the Introduction before you start on the stories (I often read Introductions at the end). Babel was only 45 when he was killed in Stalin’s purges.

The volume is divided into three parts: Gangsters and Other Old Odessans; Childhood and Youth; and Love Letters and Apocrypha. I always struggle to write about short story collections and generally Babel’s stories are so short that I don’t want to give spoilers. Here I just want to give a flavour and you can see if you might want to seek out these stunning stories for yourself.

The first part is mainly told in the third person and weaves together tales of violence and corruption, with recurring characters including “Benya Krik, gangster and King of the gangsters”. The tales are colourful and carnivalesque, but Babel never allows the broader strokes to obscure the unlawful methods that so many live by:

“At this wedding they served turkey, roast chicken, goose, gefilte fish and fish soup in which lakes of lemon glimmered like mother-of-pearl. Flowers swayed above the dead goose heads like lush plumage. Does the foamy surf of Odessa’s sea wash roast chickens ashore?”

At the same time, he doesn’t position the reader above the gangsters or way of life. Babel suggests that this side of Odessa is as it is because this the logical way to be, and it has emerged as part of the society, laws and political structures that surround it:

“Let’s not throw dust in each other’s eyes. There’s no one else in the world like Benya the King. He cuts through lies and looks for justice, be it justice in quotes or without them. While everyone else, they’re as calm as clams. They can’t be bothered with justice, won’t go looking for it – and that’s worse.”

The second part of the stories in Childhood and Youth becomes more personal, with first-person tales that follow on from one another in some instances. I understand The Story of My Dovecote is the most famous, and rightly so. Within this brilliant collection, it still stands out. (Skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t want to know any details in advance.)

A young boy has spent five of his ten years coveting a dovecote. He manages to find ways around the anti-Semitism at his school to do well academically and get the reward of finally being able to buy his doves. He sets out to the market with his money and gets his beloved birds, tucking them into his jacket. If your heart is sinking at this description, you are absolutely right…

The story is fifteen pages in this edition and completely devastating. I would urge anyone to read it, but it will absolutely stay with you. It will rip your heart out and stamp all over it. The final word of this story is “pogrom”.

There are lighter stories in this section too, such as The Awakening, about a precocious young man:

“Writing was a hereditary occupation in our family. Levi Yitzchak, who went mad in his old age, had spent his whole life composing a tale titled A Man With No Head. I took after him.”

Odessa Stories was my first experience of reading Babel and I was blown away. Babel clearly enjoyed the almost fabulist tales of Benya the King, but somehow never glamorised him. His writing is hugely entertaining but also truthful – the violence towards people and animals suddenly appears in the midst of the stories and jolts the reader to remember the visceral realities of what is being described.

In evoking the worst of human behaviour in Dovecote, Babel is restrained and absolutely drives home the tragedy.

Babel’s writing is intensely human, marrying together humour, violence, pathos and beauty seamlessly. I will definitely seek out more by him on the strength of Odessa Stories. Sadly, there isn’t much as his life was cut short. However, Pushkin Press publish Red Cavalry, another short story collection.

“For the first time I saw my surroundings as they actually were – hushed and unspeakably beautiful.”