My first three reviews for Novellas in November, hosted by Rebecca and Cathy – one not what I expected, one intense and stream of consciousness and one rather lovely.
The Sound of My Voice by Ron Butlin
Championed by Kim and Lizzy, this 1987 novella is billed on the cover by Irvine Welsh as “A Genius piece of fiction”. Here’s how it begins
You were at a party when your father died – and immediately you were told, a miracle happened. A real miracle. It didn’t last, of course, but was convincing enough for a few moments. An hour later, you took a girl home and tried to make love to her. You held on to her as she pleaded with you: even now her distress is the nearest you have come to feeling grief at your father’s death. You are thirty-four years old; everything that has ever happened to you is still happening.
Immediately, the implied lack of consent rather dates this novel. Our second person narrator is Morris Magellan, an executive at a biscuit factory – yes, he could be Reggie Perrin at Sunshine Desserts – but rather than just imagine it like Reggie, Morris does make a disastrous pass at his secretary!
You are thirty-four years old and already two-thirds destroyed. When your friends and business colleagues meet you they shake your hand and say, ‘Hello. Morris.’ You reply, ‘Hello,’ usually smiling. At home your wife and children – your accusations, as you call them – love you and need you. You know all this, and know that it is not enough.
For Morris is a fully functioning alcoholic. His wife understands and tries to help, Morris does try to stop, repeatedly, but to no avail. His beloved classical music has ceased to help his troubled mind. At work he’s increasingly unreliable, at the weekends he keeps suggesting picnics or breakfast on the lawn. After that opening quote above, the first chapter gives us a flavour of his childhood and never being good enough for his father, which undoubtedly helped to set him on the path he has chosen.
I just found it very sad and inevitable. The second-person narration does bring out his inner voice brilliantly, but while that may be a stylistic triumph, I can’t say I enjoyed this novella enough to give it a genius tag. His forcing himself upon a young woman wasn’t nice at all, although well-written – he realises what he is doing in that inner voice. It is, however, its provinciality that sets it apart from other novels of 80s excess like Amis’s Money, for instance. What comedy there is in this novella is very dark indeed, hidden in Morris’s disintegration. It’s not an easy read and in our age of #MeToo, the chauvinistic attitudes date it somewhat. It is a shame that the latest cover doesn’t have the party ring biscuit on though!
Polygon paperback, 2018. Paperback, 149 pages incl fore and afterwords. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link (free UK+ P&P)
Every Time We Say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić
I intended to review this novella for Shiny New Books, but found that I didn’t have enough to say about it for a typical Shiny longer-form review.
A man leaves his partner and takes a train towards Berlin. Along the way he thinks about his life and his situation, what he is running away from and what he is running towards, comparing it with episodes of violence in the past and the world at large. He is returning to Berlin, a place of happier times for him in the past, but will it give him the welcome he hopes for?
… I left, saving us both, because I couldn’t unhear her grand ‘I don’t love you,’ a beautifully phrased sentence I will never forget: …
This novella may only be 118 pages, but it contains a lot of word; each of the sections, rather than chapters, is several pages – written in a single paragraph, and as a single sentence in true stream of consciousness style, allowing our narrator, our thinker, to flit from thought to thought, from his partner to the political situation in his country, from his own divided family to the ruined factories he sees from the train, and yes a shipwreck as in the front cover photo (recalling the cover of Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong).
Once you get into the style (Did you like my long sentence above?) it does flow beautifully as a text, poetic even, but it never lets up on the undercurrent of anger capturing the zeitgeist of Europe today, except perhaps to wistfully hope that the promise of his friend in Berlin will work out. Sajko withholds the make or break moments of the narrator’s relationship to the end which brings it to a climax. The translation is pitch perfect and, as the translator’s note at the end says, a labour of love. Not an easy read, but a rewarding one.
Source: Review copy – thank you! V&Q Flapped paperback, 123 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.
The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
One of the best novellas I’ve ever read was the two-hander, This is How You Lose the Time War by El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. El-Mohtar has now produced this exquisite novella, which is a fantasy queer romance centred around the magical River Liss, which flows full of grammar – I’ll let her describe it…
There was a time when grammmar was wild–when it shifted shapes and unleashed new forms out of old. Grammar, like gramarye like grimoire. What is magic but a channge in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another? She runs; she ran; she will run again.
The River Liss runs north to south, and its waters brim with grammar. From its secret sources in Arcadia it rushes, conjugating as it flows into the lands we think we know.
It’s a lovely idea isn’t it? Two big old willow trees on the banks mark the boundary of the normal world as it transforms into Arcadia, Faerie, if you will. The Hawthorn family harvest the willow trees along from the two Guardians, and sisters Esther and Ysabel weave baskets to sell at the Thistleford market. Esther is being courted by their neighbour Samuel Pollard, who is rich, landed, but so not Esther’s type and she rejects his advances, for Esther has met Rin, a harper from Arcadia and the two are in love. Pollard is deadly jealous.
I shall say no more, but bear in mind the transformative powers of the river and grammar. El-Mohtar is also a poet and she uses that effectively to propel this slim story to its conclusion. It felt like a Thomas Hardy short story set on the Faerie borders!
The River has Roots comes in at just under 100 pages including line drawings by Kathleen Neeley, but another short story is included to bulk out the book. John Hollowbak and the Witch. A man visits a witch to have the hole in his back mended – little knowing what a trial that will be. A sweet little fantasy, and an author I’ll keep watching for more from. The only thing that confused me was why the front cover has dahlias on!
Source: Own copy. Tordotcom hardback, 133 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.
I’ve read the Sajko and I’m hoping to post on it soon. The style was an easier to read than I expected!
The River Has Roots sounds excellent, I’ll look out for it.
The Butlin sounds intriguing but perhaps hard to read nowadays. As for The River Has Roots, that sounds brilliant!
Very striking covers all round. I fancy the Sajko, I think. Thomas Hardy meets Faerie is quite the description!
The rural setting did feel like Wessex!
ooh The River Has Roots sounds great!
I’ve heard great things about the El-Mohtar but am allergic to faeries. Am encouraged that it’s so short though!
There’s no actual faeries in it – more an enchanted land with transformational powers.
Loved your long sentence in the middle one! I wrote a review of a book in the second person all in the second person once … and no one noticed!