Tag: novella

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

A 2022 Booker shortlisted work, apparently the shortest ever nominated, at 110 pages. This flags quality over quantity.

The third person narrator entirely follows the protagonist, Bill as he goes about an Irish country town in the run up to Christmas 1985. He is a family man part of a close knit community. The old and new Ireland are uneasily meeting, but tradition and the power of the church are still strong. Stigma still attaches to unmarried mothers, contraception and abortion. Economic insecurity haunts the town.

The plot unveils as Bill is accidentally faced with realities about the local convent laundry in a first hand way. Does he intervene to stop abuse to a girl, or remain silent? As Christmas nears the internal moral pressure on him builds. What was half known and veiled is now real to him. He has to be grateful for an intervention in his own early life. A moral dilemma builds quietly. Will he act, or settle for the complicity all around him?

Keegan references “A Christmas Carol”, this is about good and bad, acting or not acting, though without the extravagance and theatricality of Dickens. Rather, the writing is precise, focused and very human. No scene is wasted. The circumstances of the wider issues are clear and brought down to the individual, small actions are large for the person, individual actions make change. The locality and characters are skilfully drawn, dialect is present lyrically. The psychology of mental preoccupation in a time of seeming happiness and the weight of the unsaid are palpable. There is a town bridge, a Rubicon, to cross, will Bill cross it, will his country?

The cover of this edition depicts a snowy Bruegel landscape with hunched black figures, which reflects the real dark issues addressed in this book of fiction. Keegan shows us, as good writers do that the best fiction is never “only” fiction.

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

A novella which like the later “Proleterka” casts a literary spell. The writer evokes teenage life in a Swiss girls school through the eyes of Eve the narrator, with a strong suggestion of charged memoir.

Eve’s inner reflections and thoughts are centred on the seemingly perfect, to Eve, Frederika, who is on a pedestal, “a tall marbly figure”. This takes place in a setting of pristine alpine scenery and spartan school life, which manages Eve and makes her conform. The outer person is controlled, mannered, presented. Like many things Eve feels ambivalent about this, which fires her observations, feelings and reactions.

The language is spare, precise, dreamy and unflinching, embodying longing, regret and resignation. The narrator reveals and conceals, the reader is both enthralled and addressed indirectly. On page one the Appenzell setting is referred to as, “It’s an Arcadia of sickness.”

The potential for mental illness is present. Is Frederika an alter ego, or even part of Eve?

The northern alpine culture is contrasted at one point with a fantasy of Frederika strolling barefoot along a Spanish shore, only once and never realised. Reality is as fleeting as the fantasy, but imperfect. Later scenes follow the adult characters and explain why the days of discipline were sweet. Everything is incisively written.

Beautiful prose poetry from Jaeggy. The only way to appreciate it its to read it.

Proleterka by Fleur Jaeggy

A daughter goes on a Mediterranean cruise with her father to spend rare time together. From this memory other memories are strung by the narrator to produce a powerful novella of eighty-nine pages.

The narrator is not specifically named, other than as “Johannes’s daughter” and she uses a mixture of first and third person and tenses to give a shifting and constantly partially focusing revelation of herself, more internal than addressing a reader. Flick through the book and you will notice there is sparse dialogue, though social situations and family life are the subjects. The viewpoint is the detached observer.

The narrators childhood and surroundings are evoked as a world of stifling and repressed bourgeois convention and relative materiality. Into this the narrator suffers the separation of her parents and the brittle care of Orsola her grandmother and subsequent deaths.

Emotional detachment and apathy marks all the family. Their indifference seems bolstered by a determination never to engage and to be frank about death and suicide. Yet Jaeggy uses the atmosphere of ennui to spin the tale with a sense of place, the past, mystery and suspense, which engages.

Also, there is a whole other element to the writing, it uses imagery, metaphor and gem like passages which rise to prose poetry, p13, “The heart incorruptible crystal”. Paragraphs on p34-35 use the metaphor of the piano and music to describe relationships. The deathbed scene p41, with its “green nightlight”, as an image, could compare with Owen’s “thick green light”, in “Dulce et Decorum est”. Maybe history and misfortune has blighted this middle European family, which walks on the edge with insouciance.

The narrator uses the voyage to acquire sexual experience, perfunctory and mercenary, which seems to suit, a tiny expectation of emotional engagement is quickly lost. Apparently, Proleterka, the name of the ship, can translate as proletarian lass, which is the last thing the narrator is. Her coming of age on the ship only confirms her as becoming like her ancestors.

Jaeggy’s poetry in this book is intriguing. Some paragraphs could stand alone on a page like poems, love is hidden and space speaks. It is probably worth a second reading. I suspect I have missed deeper things said by this skilled and careful writer.

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

At one hundred and forty pages this 1948 novella, by the celebrated Ernesto Sabato, makes up for in literary punch what it lacks in length. Deservedly named a “Modern Classic” by Penguin it contains elements drawn from Freudian, surreal and existentialist influences. It is an interior monologue tracing obsession where psychological reality and unreality clash.

The artist Castel becomes fixated with Maria, he stalks her until they meet. Possibly aided by his art and fame they form a relationship. The course of the affair is dominated by Castel’s intense ideals and paranoia. He deals with every micro comment and behaviour with impossible logic and extrapolation, in which Maria is always judged to be suspect or guilty. The fatal climax is followed by his recollection from the prison cell.

The book is a study in the psychosis of a narcissistic ego. It is described through the meeting of that personality in a romantic relationship with another. The effect on Castel is written in very short intense paragraphs which draw out the relentless anxiety and battle between an increasingly twisted logic and a sociopathic sensibility. His efforts to control only lead to increased perceptions of powerlessness. This self-absorption means he actually sees little of the real Maria, typical observations of her are, “She looked frightened” and “Maria’s eyes were sad”. As Sabato does such a good job of looking through Castel’s eyes the tiny amount of Maria we see is both shocking and tragic.

Why? Why does Castel think and behave as he does? Is this climax of his life the explosion of forces that have been brewing since childhood? There are scattered clues in Castel’s endless referencing and thoughts, which you will collect as you read. Overall, the impression seems to be left of someone who craves an impossible ideal he blames others (mother?) for setting and in true misanthrope style all other women are in on the conspiracy. Presumably, Castel can only function in society by presenting a split personality, aggravating his issues. Help or intervention is not sought or offered, all this happens in distilled isolation. In moments of self awareness he sees himself as in a mental tunnel, with glimpses to the outside.

Sabato presents a contrast to Orwell and Kafka, here the oppressor and the repression are internal. The terse and controlled writing style directs and communicates the story of chaotic mental dissolution. A modern day Othello.