Reading More Novellas in November

Two more novellas to write about before I wind up my November Novella Challenge.

They have similar themes, but they are two very different little books.

Madame Verona Comes Down The Hill has at its heart a story that is simple, sad and lovely.

Madame Verona and her musician husband Monsieur Potter live in an isolated house at the top of a steep hill overlooking the village of Oucwegne.

The village is quiet and remote, slowly dying because no girls ever seem to be born there. Both the couple and the community are reaching the end of their lives.

Madame and Monsieur are happy, together in their own home and on their own land. But as they grow older things become more difficult. Monsieur Potter is diagnosed with an incurable disease and makes the to take his own life, to die in his own time and on his own land.

The villagers think that Madame Verona will not manage, will not want to live alone, will come down the hill to live in the village. But she stays in the home that she shared with her husband for another twenty years with only her dogs for company. She burns the firewood that her husband left her and builds a cello from the wood of the tree from which her husband hanged himself.

Love and loss are quite palpable.

Eventually the day comes when the last log has been burned and the cello has been built. And then Madame Verona does come down the hill, knowing she won’t have the strength to go back up ever again.

Utterly moving.

Dimitri Verhulst has written a wonderful meditation on love, ageing and loss, using language and imagery quite beautifully.

Sometimes though I found that all of those other things overwhelmed the profound truth and beauty at the heart of the story

That make this into a book to stand back and admire rather than a book to wrap your arms around and hug.

Some like the former, but I prefer the latter.

Translated by David Colmer.

The End of the Alphabet was a much more huggable book.

Ambrose Zephyr is a fifty year old, happily married Londoner. But then he is diagnosed with an unidentified terminal illness and given only a month to live.

Ambrose that he must to seize the day. And so, accompanied by his wife Zappora Ashkenazi (also known as Zipper) he sets off on a journey round the world, visiting each city on his list in alphabetical order.

Each stop evokes different memories, different emotions for Ambrose and Zipper. And each must learn to cope with Ambrose’s illness in their own way.

The chapters grow shorter as time runs out, and events take an unexpected turn before a sudden conclusion that is, sadly, inevitable.

Ambrose’s story is both quirky and charming. That together with the alphabetical conceit could have been too much, but it works because those elements are balanced with very real emotions.

A wealth of tiny details, the little things that couples know about each other, bring Ambrose and Zipper. And all of the important things ring true.

An ordinary couple made special by their love for each other. True magic!

I was devastated for Zipper when she lost her husband, but I could smile too when I thought of her and Ambrose together.

A bittersweet delight.

***************

And that rounds off this year’s November Novella Challenge for me.

I must thank by J.T. from Bibliofreak for hosting once again and inspiring me to pick up some lovely little books.

The two I’ve written about today plus Niki: The Story of a Dog by Tibor Déry and Beside the Sea by Veronica Olmi.

I only wish I could have fitted in a few more. But hopefully we’ll do it all again next year!

The Boy Next Door, Orange Prizes and Reading Ambitions

Back in the spring when the longlist for this year’s Orange Prize came out I was inspired. So many wonderful books, some that I’d heard of and some that I hadn’t. My heart said read then all! My head agreed that it would be wonderful, but that I couldn’t possibly do it before the shortlist came out or even before the award was made.

As of today I’ve read eight of the twenty, I have three more to hand, and I haven’t ruled out reading the lot. Eventually!

But that ambition went on to the back burner when I saw the shortlist for the Orange Award for New Writers. Just three books, and two of them were already on my radar. Now that was do-able!

The first was The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale. It had popped up in my Amazon recommendations, I’d seen it in a few other places and I was ready to pick it up as soon as a copy appeared in the library. When it appeared on the shortlist I placed an order. It proved to be a very readable book, with plenty of twists and turns and an engaging heroine. But there were problems. A few plot holes and some opportunities missed. A promising debut but it didn’t really seem worthy of the shortlist.

And then there was After The Fire, A Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld. The cover caught my eye in the library towards the end of last year, and the title was intriguing. When I first picked it up I wasn’t sure it would be my sort of book, but I read so much praise that I have to give it a try. It was a very accomplished debut, a book more than worthy of all the praise showered upon it, but it didn’t quite click with me I’m afraid.

And finally there was The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini – the only shortlisted book I hadn’t heard of before the list came out.

I fell in love with this one and I had planned to post about it on the evening of the award. But I didn’t quite get to it. Then it won, and a celebratory post seemed to be in order. But I was distracted by life, took a blogging break and it didn’t happen.

Until now!

The setting interested me: Zimbabwe shortly after the Act of Settlement and the first free elections, when white minority rule ended and Robert Mugabe came to power. I was young but my best friend had cousins the same age as us in Zimbabwe, and so we followed developments carefully. 

And then the heroine captivated me. In 1978 she was 14, the same age as me and we seemed so much alike. Lindiwe Bishop was quiet, bright but not quite at the top of the class, and she was bookish. She read Sue Barton books, books that I loved but had quite forgotten about. But I would have loved her even without that wonderful reminder.

Lindiwe was of mixed race and she lived with her family in what was previously an all-white suburb of Bulawayo.

Ian McKenzie, the boy next door, was a few years older than Lindiwe and he was white. A different class. And it seems that Ian is trouble. A fire is set at the McKenzie home, and Ian is accused, found guilty and jailed. In time the conviction is overturned and Ian is released, but suspicion still hangs over him.

Lindiwe is warned to steer clear, but she is fascinated by the boy next door and they begin a clandestine relationship.

The story follows that relationship over the next ten years, against the background of the new and changing  Zimbabwe. A relationship complicated by racial tensions, family relationships and secrets, demons from the past. It seems doomed to fail, but I couldn’t help hoping that it would succeed.

It works brilliantly, both the small picture and the big picture. The story of the country and the stories of Lindiwe, Ian and the people around them. I felt for them all, but most of all for Lindiwe as she matured, as her understanding grew, and as she struggled to cope with life’s ups and downs.

I was engaged, moved, and informed by The Boy Next Door.

Definitely a worthy award winner.

Beside The Sea by Véronique Olmi

Many, many words have been written about Beside The Sea by Véronique Olmi, and they have almost all been positive. Now that I have finally read it I can understand why.

It is a quite extrordinary piece of writing. I reacted to it physically and emotionally, and it made me look at the world differently.

Several days after I finished reading it is still in my head, and I am utterly lost for words.

I can add nothing more, say nothing different to what has been said already.

But I can thank the publisher, Meike Ziervogel of Pereine Press, and praise and endorse her words about Beside The Sea.

“This is the most impressive novel about the mother and child relationship I have ever read. Véronique Olmi handles an aspect of motherhood we all too often deny. She depicts a woman’s fear of releasing her children into the world. The simple first person narrative achieves an extraordinary level of poetry and inner truth.”

And, just in case you haven’t read about this book before, I can direct you to some of the more articulate souls who have written about it.

A Common Reader:

“In Beside the Sea, Véronique Olbi has perfectly captured the harshness of life where loneliness and poverty represent insuperable barriers to contentment. The voice which narrates the tale is perfect. We are not told the woman’s history, but its all there in her speech, the familiarity with bargain-basement life, the little flashes of humour emerging from a tormented subconscious, the maternal love for her boys, marred by too much struggle to keep her head above water.”

Farm Lane Books Blog:

“Not much happens in this book. Regular readers of my blog will know that this is normally a very bad thing for me, but in the hands of such a fantastic writer this didn’t matter; the ordinary was given an emotional dimension and made to come alive.”

Caribou’s Mom:

“Veronique Olmi’s novella is one about the fragile nature of relationships, the love of a mother whose fears for her children put them in danger, and the sad spiral into mental illness. Narrated in the limited first person point of view of the mother, the story becomes a powerful exploration inside the head of a person who is losing their grip on reality. Olmi’s prose is beautifully yet simply wrought. It captures the bleakness of the sea on a stormy day and the isolation of a woman who has no one but her children.”

Chasing Bawa:

“This isn’t an easy book to read, but you’ll find that you won’t be able to stop reading because you just need to know where the story is hurtling towards. Just give yourself a little breathing space in between books, and some quiet time, to really take it in.”

Dove Grey Reader:

“I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything quite like it and as I turned the final page I was possibly a bit pale around the gills and dumbstruck at the place where Veronique Olmi had taken me and left me…it’s one of those last sentence books… “

Yes, this is an extrordinary book. A book to shout about, and yet I am still lost for words.

Translated by Adrienne Hunter

Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray

Diamond Star Halo. 

 Now where did that come from? I spotted the book, face up on a table and those words buzzed around in my head throughout the visit. What was the next line? Where did it come from?

The answer just wouldn’t come, so I picked up the book on the way out of the library to see if that would help. It didn’t, but I recalled Tiffany Murray’s first novel, Happy Accidents, which I enjoyed. I very much liked what I read on the jacket too, and so the book came home.

And once I had read it I acquired a copy of my own to keep. Yes, that good.

So what was it like?

Well,  if it was a recipe it would read like this:

“Take  the following ingredients:

• a large handful of I Capture the Castle
• a dash of Wuthering Heights
• a teaspoon of Cold Comfort Farm
• a teaspoon of Cider With Rosie
• a pinch of fairy dust

Mix together gently and then leave your mixture in the Welsh countryside until the 1970s. Just let it take in the air, and it will take on a new character, entirely its own.”

Yes, Diamond Star Halo is one of those books that recognises its influences, loves them, respects them, and then goes forward into completely different territory.

Halo Llewelyn lives at RockFarm, a recording studio set in the Welsh countryside.

” For the first two years of my life I was “Baby” then mum decided on “Halo”. “Diamond Star Halo to be exact, because she loved Marc Bolan and T Rex, and because I learned to walk to “Get It On” and Mum said I was dirty sweet and I was her girl.”

Aha!

Halo’s mother was the heart of her family, a homemaker in the best sense of the word. And her father was a music producer, explaining where they lived.

Then there was her cross-dressing brother Vince and her little sister Molly, who was in quite a hurry to be grown up. And Nana, a countrywoman with a saying and an answer for everything.

Halo really does bring her family and their world to life.  There’s a wonderful mix of the magical and the humdrum!

You really can’t help but love them all. Halo especially.

In the summer an American band, Tequila, arrives at the studio. Halo is captivated by Jennie, their heavily pregnant singer. Jennie warms to the child too, and a lovely bond develops between them.

But suddenly everything changes. Jennie’s child is born at the height of the summer, and then Jennie dies. Tequila leave, but baby Fred stay behind to grow up at RockFarm.

And he grows up to be a rock star, just like his Mum …

There is a special bond between Halo and Fred. But is he her brother? Or is he something else?

And that’s as much as I’m going to say. This is one of those stories that has to unwind gently and draw you in as you read.

There’s a wonderful mix of so many characters, so many emotions, and Tiffany Murray handles them all beautifully.

Light and dark are perfectly balanced.

And this is a story packed full of lovely details. Much whimsy and much music.

Held together by a family, and by love.

What more could you ask for?

Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

Have you ever loved a book so much that you read it over, and yet you didn’t think to find out if the author had written anything else?

That’s exactly what happened to my mother and I with Louisa May Alcott. Between us we have worn out a hardback edition from the forties. Worn out with love you understand! The sequels have seen a fair bit of wear too, but neither of us ever thought to find out what else our beloved author had written.

But a few years ago now I downloaded a numerical list of Virago Modern Classics, and I spotted a familiar name that I really hadn’t expected to see

336 Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger by Shena Mackay
337 Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
338 A Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
339 Alexander’s Bridge by Willa Cather

Those two books went straight on to my wishlist. I tracked down lovely green Virago editions, and now I have met Rose.

On first introduction she wasn’t what I had expected at all.

“Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected.”

To be fair, Rose had good reasons to cry. She was an only child who never knew her mother. And then she lost her father two, and was taken away from the only home she ever knew to live with her great aunts. They did their best, but they couldn’t quite understand the little girl.

I would have cried too, and so I felt for Rose from the start.

I realised then just how lucky the March girl had been to have each other, and I recalled how much I had longed for a sister as a child.

But those thoughts were soon left behind, and I became caught up in Rose’s story.

Hope arrived for Rose in the shape of Uncle Alec, her father’s bachelor brother, who was Rose’s legal guardian. She warmed to him immediately – he was so like her beloved father.

Alec had plans for his niece’s upbringing. And it would be an upbringing that was, to say the very least, atypical of the age.

“This is part of the cure Rose, and I put it to you that you might take my three great remedies in the best and easiest way. Plenty of sun, fresh air, and cold water, also cheerful surroundings and some work; for phebe is to show you how to take care of this room, and be your little maid as well as your friend and teacher…”

Uncle Alec even tears up Rose’s corsets!

Louisa May Alcott spins a lovely tale, and I loved her storytelling as much as I ever did, as I watched Rose growing up in the company of her seven cousins. All boys!

I loved watching the author dismiss so many silly and repressive Victorian notions in a story with such a warm heart, while holding on to what was wise and sensible.

Rose grew into a lovely young woman: warm, compassionate and intelligent. A credit to her uncle and his new fangled ideas!

And she became part of a bigger, more unusual family, than the one she lost.

I’m looking forward to meeting that family again when I read Rose in Bloom.

And I’m looking forward to seeing another side of the author: A Long and Fatal Love Chase is in my library pile.

Then there’s Harriet Reisen’s acclaimed biography of the Louisa May alcott. I so want to read it, but I promised myself that I read more of the subject’s work first so that I can get the best from it.

Is there anything else you can recommend?

And isn’t it wonderful how one book can lead you to others?!

Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Tatty. That wasn’t her real name. her real name was Caroline, but Tatty stuck because she was a “tell-tale-tattler”, a child who made up and told stories.

That wasn’t surprising. Tatty was a bright child in a large and troubled family, growing up in Dublin in the sixties.

Tatty’s story tells of her family.

An ebullient father, full of good intentions but oh so easily distracted by his love of the bookies and a good time. A mother who is struggling, maybe with mental health issues, and growing ever more dependent on alcohol. Two brothers and two sisters, one handicapped.

It could have been just another story of a disturbed childhood. But it wasn’t. And that was because Christine Dwyer Hickey created an utterly believable little girl who it was quite impossible to resist.

Her observation was acute and her voice was quite unique: intelligent, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking. 

 “When you go to a birthday party, you get jelly and ice-cream, cake and chocolate Rice Krispie buns. You say thank you very much for the lovely party, then you go home with everyone else. If it’s your birthday party you say, Thanks very much for coming to my party and for the lovely present and all. When everyone’s gone you look at the presents again, say which is your favourite and which is your worst. You spread out the cards, read all the poems inside; you suck the icing off the end of the candles. Then you say thanks to mum for the lovely party and help her to clean up the table.

But when adults have a party it isn’t the same. They go a bit funny. Sometimes they sing and that can be good. They laugh and clap and make noble calls: that means you have to sing if you’re picked even if you don’t want to. Mam and Dad are happy when there’s singing going on. Mam knows lots of songs: the one about summertime, the one about diamonds, the one where she wants an old-fashioned millionaire. Mam is the best singer of all. She sings like someone off the pictures. Auntie Jane’s the scariest with her voice all shaky and dry. Uncle Matt’s funny doing his letting on he’s a woman with Aunt Winnie’s handbag. Then everyone says he’s a scream. dad doesn’t sing but he makes loads of jokes. Everyone’s happy and everyone claps. Then it’s time to go home and Mam and Dad stop enjoying themselves again.

If the party’s in your house then Dad just goes to bed and Mam stays up and finishes her drink and smokes on her own. The next day the house is all smelly and you have to open the windows and make sure you empty all the bottles down the sink before you put them in the brown bags outside the back door.

Sometime’s there’s no singing only talking, except it’s not really talking it’s shouting instead. They don’t listen to each other, because they’re only waiting on their turn to shout. They say the same things over and over. They talk about things that happened years ago. Then there might be a row, Everyone goes home at different times. If one of them goes home too early the people who are left behind always say something about them. You hear loads of stuff because they forget to send you out. They’re too busy shouting so they don’t notice anything. They never notice anything.”

The details were right. They rang true, and that made this book sing.

Tatty’s voice shifted between first, second and third persons. it bothered me a little at first, but then I realised that her viewpoint was shifting. Sometimes she was talking to others, sometimes to herself, sometimes she was just trying to set out her story. Something clicked and then the shifts seemed entirely right.

Her story charts her progress from a childish to a more mature understanding of her family and her world. A family and a world that changes around her.

It is a story with a lot to say about the effects of alcoholism, of family troubles, on children. About how your family is your family no matter what.

The story of one girl. Clear-eyed and honest. Sometimes shocking, but always believable. Emotional, but never sentimental.

The ending was not a conclusion, but a realisation.

And now I miss Tatty, and I wonder what happened to her and her family …

Niki: The Story of a Dog by Tibor Déry

“The Dog adopted the Ancsas in the spring of  1948 …”

The Ancsas were a childless couple in their early fifties, living in the suburbs of Budapest.

The country was laid low by the War, and now it has a new Communist government promising a brighter future.

Mr Ancsa is an engineer posted to Budapest. He wants to move to an apartment in the city, but one cannot be found and so he and his wife have had to settle for rooms in the suburbs.

It really wasn’t the time to take on a dog but Niki, a terrier of indeterminate breed, insinuated herself into their hearts and then their home.

A  city apartment was eventually found and the country moved, taking Niki with them. But things went wrong. Mr Ancsa, inadvertently, upset some powerful people and he was imprisoned. For five long years Mrs Ancsa and Niki only had each other. Both pined.

Finally Mr Ancsa came home …

This is a simple downbeat story. Never sentimental, but always moving.

It is beautifully written and the story well told. It words so well because human and canine stories are perfectly balanced, and because Déry conveys the story of the dog so well. I can’t work out quite how he does it, but succeeds to painting a perfect portrait of Niki without presuming to think for her and without assuming human characteristics.

It really is a perfect portrait. My own terrier is asleep at my feet and so many things reminded me of her. The prized possession of a rubber ball, destroyed but still cherished until the final fragment is gone. The bracing of the body and the incredible force that a small animal can place on a lead when it doesn’t want to go. The anxious demeanour when a family member does not appear at the usual time. I could go on, but you probably get the idea. The big things and the small things all rang true.

The stories of an ordinary couple and an ordinary dog come together to make an extraordinary story.

The underlying themes are love, kindness, and the patience and endurance that brings. And there is more than that: with great subtlety, Déry compares the position  of a domestic animal, not fully in control of its life and not understanding how and why some things are happening, with the position of the humans that share its home.

Niki’s story is thought-provoking and very readable.

A fine addition to the NYRB list.

Translated by Georges Szirtes

The Thornthwaite Inheritance by Gareth P Jones

“Lorelli and Ovid Thornthwaite had been trying to kill each other for so long that neither twin could remember which act of murder came first. Was it Lorelli’s cunning scheme to put on a play about the French Revolution, casting Ovid in the role of an aristocrat to be executed using a working guillotine? Or could it have been that long hot summer when Ovid managed to produce an iced lolly containing a small but deadly explosive, triggered by the surrounding ice reaching melting point? Whoever had struck first, trying to take each other’s life was now simply something the Thornthwaite twins did …”

Unusual? Certainly, but you have to bear in mind that Lorelli and Ovid had a rather unusual upbringing.

They grew up in an isolated 87 room mansion and, after their father and mother died, in rapid succession and in strange and little explained circumstances, they were brought up by the butler, the housekeeper, the cook and the gardener, with the estate that they inherited held in trust until they came of age.

The didn’t go to school, they didn’t even leave the grounds because, the butler explained, there were terrible dangers lurking.

That was why the household continued in mourning, wearing black, eating bland food, and even disconnecting the telephone and selling the television so that the outside word could not intrude.

Was it any wonder then, that the duo concocted dangers for themselves at home?

Eventually though they decided that enough was enough, and the family solicitor was summoned to ensure that the peace treaty was legal and binding. He arrived, accompanied by his young son, the deal was sealed, and yet the murder attempts continued.

A rampaging bear, an exploding piano, a killer bee hive …

The twins investigated, sometimes together and sometimes, when one believed the other to be responsible, apart.

They uncovered an extraordinarily complex plot: it involved a horribly overdue library book, a swiftly scored piece of music, an exploding piano …

At first progress was a little slow, and I wondered if I should be reading this children’s book, but soon things took off and I was hooked.

The plotting was so clever: it twisted and turned in fine style, and the author make excellent use of every character, every plot device that he introduced. That meant that there was plenty going on, and luckily it was well mixed and balanced and no problem to follow.

And there was much more here than mystery: it was lovely to watch Lorelli and Ovid on a voyage of discovery as they began to explore the world beyond their home and its grounds.

Eventually, of course, there was a grand denouement. Much was revealed, and quite a few fingers were pointed in wrong directions, before the final truth was revealed and justice was finally done.

The Thornthwaite Inheritance is a fine, witty, intelligent, gothic mystery.

Wonderful and unbelievable fun for all ages!

What Colour was your Day?

Mine was rather grey. Four hours of budget meetings!! When I got home I picked up a book that has opening sentences that always put things into perspective:

“I suppose everybody has a mental picture of the days of the week, some seeing them as a circle, some as an endless line, and others again, for all I know, as triangles and cubes. Mine is a wavy line proceeding to infinity, dipping to Wednesday which is the colour of old silver dark with polishing and rising again to a pale gold Sunday. This day has a feeling in my picture of warmth and light breezes and sunshine and afternoons that stretch to infinity and mornings full of far-off bells.”

Isn’t that wonderful?

It comes from Three Houses, an early autobiographical work by Angela Thirkell.

My evening was brightened by a lovely walk along the seafront with Briar, and now I’m going to spend an hour on the sofa, knitting and watching The Apprentice, before I retire to bed with an NYRB Classic.

What colour was your day?

Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati

Now, how do I explain this one? It’s not my usual sort of book at all. But that’s the thing about loving a publisher – sometimes you’re inspired to buy something quite extraordinary.

Not, you understand, that I have anything against Italian graphic novels from the 1960s!

Poem Strip is a remarkable retelling of the classical tale of Orpheus and Euridyce.

The story opens in Milan:

“On Via Saterna in the old city there’s a house with a large garden that appears to have been abandoned years ago…”

Opposite that house is the home of an old, aristocratic family. Orph, the son of the house, has broken with tradition: he is a wildly successful rock star.

One day as he watches the world going by from his window he sees Eura, the love of his life, enter the the house across the street through a door he has never seen before.

Unthinking, he follows her: Orph enters the underworld. Sex and death hang heavy in the air, and Orph must fight temptation and face his worst fears as he seeks his lost love.

And he would have to sing for his life.

“Death, oh death
Gift of a wise god
All the charms of this world
Come from you
Even love.”

Poem Strip is a wonderful mixture of gothic, pop art, noir and avant garde.

The images are varied and striking; the words are simple but effective.

The overall effect was deeply unsettling and utterly compelling at the same time: I read Poem Strip in a single sitting and it has left a very firm impression.

And I’m quite sure that there are things that I missed, more layers that a second reading might reveal.

A fine addition to the NYRB list.

Translated by Marina Harrs

….. hosted at Coffeespoons and the Literary Stew.