Novella November: Three Novellas in Translation

Whilst reading as many novellas as I could get my hands on for this Novella November celebration, I came across a few titles which were fine, but which I didn’t want to write a full review of. Rather than leave my thoughts solely in my notebook, I wanted to group together three books in translation. These might end up being just what you’re looking for in your reading life, and I do hope that you find something of interest here.

The Tiger and the Acrobat by Susanna Tamaro; translated from the Italian by Nicoleugenia Prezzavento and Vicki Satlow

The Tiger and the Acrobat is one of those animal-focused fables, which have enjoyed popularity in recent years, and have been translated into many languages. In the vein of the Korean The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-mi Hwang, and the Japanese The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, I liked this well enough, but found parts of it rather repetitive and overdone.

The focus of this story is named Little Tiger. As a cub, in the region between the taiga and the Arctic tundra, she lives with her protective mother and playful brother. From the first, Little Tiger is highly philosophical, and wants nothing more than to ‘discover her own place’ within the world. This comes when her mother decides the cubs are old enough to fend for themselves, and sets off alone. Little Tiger tries to follow her, but cannot find her trail; instead, she starts to head east. She befriends a couple of humans along the way, who allow her to live with them, or help her to escape.

The Tiger and the Acrobat was rather mawkish in places, and I must say that I really disliked the way in which Little Tiger could communicate with humans. I didn’t think this was necessary, and it really added an element to the story which I was unable to suspend my disbelief for. The story is undoubtedly easy to read, with its very short chapters and rather simplistic prose, but I’m not sure that I got much from it overall. The plot is sometimes contradictory, and a little inconsistent, and it does feel a little too obvious most of the time.

The Little French Recipe Book by Jacky Durand; translated from the French by Sarah Robertson

I love France, and have really missed being able to travel there regularly over the last couple of years. Whenever I visit my local library, or – more rarely – find myself in a bookshop, I always find myself drawn to titles either set in France, or originally written in French. This led to me picking up Liberation journalist Jacky Durand’s debut, The Little French Recipe Book. And, for me, something which is just as good as French books? French food.

Our protagonist here is Julien. For thirty years, he was wondered why his mother abruptly walked out on him, leaving him with his standoffish chef father. In the present day, in the east of France, his father is dying from advanced cancer, and has been in hospital for six months. He passes away early in the narrative, which then shifts to Julien’s childhood and teenage years.

I liked the way in which so much of Durand’s writing was focused upon food, and I found his descriptions quite evocative, and hunger-inducing. The characters, though, were rather flat on the whole, and I found Julien wholly unlikeable. The book was not overly compelling in my opinion, and the mystery element – the notebook which his father filled with recipes, and which Julien so coveted – was rather disappointing in its denouement. This isn’t a bad novella by any means, and I would recommend it if you too are interested in culinary delights, but I’m not sure I’d seek out any of Durand’s books in future.

The Doll by Ismail Kadare; translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson

Ismail Kadare’s The Doll feels, in part, like a work of autobiography rather than fiction. The main character in the book has the same name as the author, and the story itself is rooted in Kadare’s Albanian homeland, in the Gjirokastër region, and later in the capital, Tirana. Subtitled ‘A Portrait of My Mother’, The Doll focuses mainly upon the narrator’s rather fascinating, and tiny, mother.

I enjoyed some of the writing here, particularly those sentences which tried to describe the enigma of the mother. Kadare writes, for instance, ‘Lightness. The wooden stairs of the house, usually so sensitive, never creaked under her feet. Like her steps, everything about her was light – her clothes, her speech, her sighs.’ He later describes her ‘fragility’ as something akin to ‘paper or plaster of Paris’. Another area of interest for me here was the inclusion of so many Albanian customs, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading about.

The Kadare of the story is open about his relationship with his mother, and the effects which they have upon one another. Whilst I found The Doll relatively interesting on the whole, I did feel as though the storyline began to wane somewhat at around the halfway mark. I did not know in which direction the story would go, but it did not really keep me guessing, and I can’t say that I was blown away by it. I would like to read more of Kadare’s books in future, but I must say that I didn’t like this anywhere near as much as Broken April, which I read back in 2018. I would, however, recommend this short volume if you’re looking for something a little different to read, which is steeped in another culture.

Du Maurier December: ‘The Doll: Short Stories’ by Daphne du Maurier ****

I have wanted to read The Doll: Short Stories ever since its publication in 2011.  Most of the stories within this book were, says Polly Samson’s introduction, ‘written early in Daphne du Maurier’s career, yet they display her mastery of atmosphere, tension and intrigue and reveal a cynicism far beyond her years’.

The Doll is made up of thirteen stories in all.  The title story was written when du Maurier was twenty: ‘It was the first thing she wrote in Fowey,’ Samson tells us, ‘having fled the distractions of a family life steeped in tittle-tattle and the Theatre.  It’s a story of obsession, and the submerged anxieties of the young writer’s mind run through the pages like wine through water’.  She believes that ‘all the themes in her later great novels can be seen here in embryonic form’.  Samson’s introduction is nicely rounded, and it does not give too much away in terms of plots and characters.

The Doll is an incredibly dark collection of stories; possibly the darkest in du Maurier’s entire oeuvre.  From the very first tale, du Maurier sets each scene marvellously; they are vivid, sometimes horribly so.  Describing the ‘barren, rugged’ island of St Hilda’s, for example, she writes: ‘The island rises out of the sea a queer, misshapen crag, splendid in its desolation, with a grey face lifted to the four winds.  It might have been thrown up from the depths of the Atlantic in a moment of great unrest, and set there, a small defiant piece of land, to withstand forever the anger of the sea’.  She builds each story beautifully, to the extent that the reader is soon quite absorbed in each subsequent tale.

Many themes worm their way into du Maurier’s stories here, most of them manifested around love and all it brings with it – adultery, sexuality, crimes of passion, jealousy, sadism and obsession, for example.  The stories tend to become quite gruesome in places.  Du Maurier demonstrates the way in which outsiders can hld such power and influence, particularly in secluded communities.  With regard to characters, those found within the pages of The Doll are often unusual and unpredictable, and they leap into life almost immediately.  Of the main protagonist in ‘The Doll’, for example, the male narrator says the following: ‘Rebecca, when I think of you with your pale earnest face, your great wide fanatical eyes like a saint, the narrow mouth that hid your teeth, sharp and white as ivory, and your halo of savage hair, electric, dark, uncontrolled – there has never been anyone more beautiful’.  Du Maurier’s narrative voices are so well controlled, whether she is writing from the first or third person, and as a male or female.

Each of the stories in The Doll are quite different, and all are unsettling in their own ways.  The title story, for example, occurs when a notebook – its pages ‘so damaged by exposure [to the sea] as to render them completely illegible’ – is washed ashore and found by a doctor.  Of the dark prose contained within the notebook, he says the following: ‘Whether the wild improbabilities of the story are true, or whether the whole is but the hysterical product of a diseased mind, we shall never know’.  Throughout, atmosphere is built to the point at which it stifles.  Of the doll, Julio, in ‘The Doll’, for instance, Du Maurier says: ‘His face was the most evil thing I have ever seen.  It was ashen pale in colour, and the mouth was a crimson gash, sensual and depraved.  The nose was thin, with curved nostrils, and the eyes were cruel, gleaming and narrow, and curiously still’.

The Doll: Short Stories is well paced and incredibly creepy at times.  Interestingly, the stories feel very modern on the whole; one would not think that the majority had been penned during the 1920s and early 1930s.  Masks and veils are used throughout, and we are lulled into a false sense of security.  Elements are then revealed which are not at all expected, rendering this collection an incredibly memorable one.

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