Tag Archives: Novella

May 29, 2016 · 3:37 pm

Review: Corven and the Krow by Jacob K. Webber

I received an advanced review copy of this novella from the author.  I don’t normally review fantasy titles, but I made an exception for this author because I know him personally.  He is one of my advanced Latin students.

My Review:
Corven and the KrowAs I have noted above I don’t usually read or review books in the fantasy genre.  It’s just not something that usually catches my attention, but when Mr. Webber sent me an e-mail to request a review how could I possibly say no?  He is one of the best students of Latin I have and, in fact, he is one of the most talented students I have ever had in my classes, so I was intrigued to see his writings.

Corven and the Krow is set in a pre-industrial, rural, agrarian society that one might encounter in The Lord of the Rings or, for those who are familiar with fantasy video games, in Skyrim.  The novella consists of a series of shorter stories which are all interconnected.  I was immediately drawn in by the set-up of the novella which describes a young girl sitting in a wagon being driven by an old man who has a large book out of which she reads this collection of stories.  We have no idea what the relationship is between these two or where they are going.  But is appears that these stories are meant to teach her some life lessons.

One of the figures that looms large and menacing over the entire story is the King Drevlyn, to whom we are introduced in the first story.  It is this cruel and powerful king around whom all of the stories revolve.  We learn that he defeated his predecessor in a bloody battle and has no mercy for anyone who did not take his side.  He demands loyalty and tribute even from the lowest members of his realm, including poor farmers.  If they don’t comply with the King’s demands then the punishment is swift and brutal.

The true talent of this author lies in his ability to create and fully describe an entire new world.  It is an amazing feat for an author to write a story set in the here and now, the contemporary world.  But I truly admire an author who can create an original world and convey the minute details about that world to others.  The world of Corven and the King and the Krow have objects and settings familiar to us, but they are crafted within the text in such a way as to encompass an entirely new and different world.

Finally, I have to mention the author’s obvious appreciation for and knowledge of the classical world.  The final story in the collection, Vita est Flumen (Life is a River), is an obvious nod to his classical education, but there are much deeper thoughts that are taken from Stoic philosophy.  All of life is constantly in flux;  life is oftentimes not fair and circumstances do not work out how we would wish.  What is important in this life is our reaction to events that are out of our control.  We must, essentially, go with the flow.

The author also designed his own cover art, which gives us a small preview of this fantasy world.  Please check out the author’s page on Amazon for more information: https://www.amazon.com/Corven-Krow-Jacob-K-Webber-ebook/dp/B01EIVWJ7S?ie=UTF8&keywords=jacob%20k.%20webber&qid=1464550195&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

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May 26, 2016 · 6:25 pm

Review: Quiet Creature on the Corner by João Gilberto Noll

I received a review copy of this title from Two Lines Press.  The book was published in the original Portugese in 1991 and this English version has been translated by Adam Morris.

My Review:
Quiet CornerThe first reaction that I had to the writing style and narrative of this book is that it feels like a series of flash fiction stories.  When we first meet the narrator he lives in Porto Alegre with his mother is a decrepit, abandoned apartment.  Other miscreant vagabonds also spend their days idling around the lobby of this building and doing drugs.  The narrator’s actions and thoughts in the book reflect his aimless and disjointed life; he talks to his mother, he tries to write poetry, he sleeps, he wanders around the city.

The writing manages to be both subtle and shocking when he sexually assaults a girl whom he encounters sitting among the ruins of the city and singing.  The narrative of this encounter is so oddly non-descript for such a horrible act that I had to go back and read the brief paragraph to confirm in my mind what had just happened.  The narrator is then thrown in a jail for his crime and the next few pages of the book deal with the broken and disgusting men he encounters in this jail.

My comparison with flash fiction came to mind because Noll provides us with several different short stories about this narrator. In just a few pages the author gives us just enough of a story to provide an image of a complete setting, but then that story ends abruptly and leaves us with a million questions and wanting more details.  What did the narrator suddenly attack this girl?  How do they know he is guilty?  Why do they set him free so quickly from jail?

The next piece of flash fiction, if we continue with my assessment of the genre, is the narrator’s visit to the countryside once he is suddenly taken from his jail cell.  He is put into a clinic in São Leopoldo where the narrator meets Kurt, a German Brazilian.  Once again many questions come to mind: What is Kurt’s connection to the institution?  Why does Kurt want to help the narrator and care for him?  Why is the narrator put in a clinic instead of being kept in a jail cell?

The final, and largest story, takes place on Kurt’s country manor where the narrator is invited to live.  Greda, Kurt’s ailing wife, Octavio, a type of handyman and Amalia, a maid, also live on the property.  The narrator continues his wandering existence while on the manor, visiting Amilia for nocturnal amorous adventures, taking walks in the woods, and falling asleep listening to the radio.  Every once in a while he dabbles at his poetry but in the middle of the narrative he announces that after this period he never writes poetry again.

There are two additional themes that pervade the narrative that are also worth mentioning.  Sex and desire are never far from the narrator’s mind.  After his attack on his neighbor, his lust does not diminish.  He has several lascivious encounters in the book which are quick and never carried out with emotion or  feeling.  He also notes that at the beginning of the book when he is in Porto Alegre he is a boy and by the time he comes to live with Kurt on his manor he has fully become a man.  When Kurt’s wife dies and he is distraught at her passing, he looks to the narrator for comfort who admits this makes him sad.  This is the first time in the story that the narrator expresses true emotion and demonstrates that he might have actually matured.

This short book is a fascinating read because of the disjointed, flash fiction feel to the prose; it is a book that leaves us wanting more, not just of the narrator’s story but of Noll’s writing as well.  I am hoping that more of this author’s works will be published in English.

Please visit the publisher’s website for an excerpt of this book: http://twolinespress.com/?project=quiet-creature-on-the-corner-by-joao-gilberto-noll

About the Author:

João Gilberto Noll is the author of nearly 20 books. His work has appeared in Brazil’s leading periodicals, and he has been a guest of the Rockefeller Foundation, King’s College London, and the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a Guggenheim Fellow. A five-time recipient of the Prêmio Jabuti, and the recipient of over 10 awards in all, he lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

 

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March 25, 2016 · 7:42 pm

Review: Distant Light by Antonio Moresco

I received an advanced review copy of this title from Archipelago Press.  The original novella was published in Italian in 2013 and this edition has been translated into English by Richard Dixon.

My Review:
Distant LightThis is a short yet powerful book that raises many more questions about the mental state of the main character than it answers.  We are led to understand from the beginning that the narrator is living alone in the mountains in what is now an abandoned village.  The only time he has interaction with other human beings is when he drives his car down the mountain to another small village.  He seems to do this only when he needs food or supplies.

The narrator spends quite a bit of time interacting with nature and even talking to the swallows, the fireflies and the trees that surround him.  Since he lives in complete solitude without an trace of another human around, he is captivated by a light he sees in the distance at the same time every night.  He spends a lot of time speculating what the light could be and it takes him a while to work up the courage to investigate the light.

I won’t fully give away what he finds when he investigates that light, but I will say that it brings him into contact with another person.  His interaction with this person makes us question the narrator’s mental state and what circumstances have brought him to live alone on that isolated mountain.  There is one sentence, which one could easily miss, in which he does say that at one point he was in the military but now chooses to live in complete solitude.  We are left to speculate if was his experience as a soldier that forced him to reject all human contact.

The book has an eerie and mysterious feeling to it, especially when the narrator figures out what is causing that light in the distance.  I would go so far as to even categorize the book as magical realism.  The narrator seems calm as he is relating his matter-of-fact existence among the foliage and animals on the mountain.  But there is an underlying uneasiness about him the punctuates the story and keeps us turning the pages to finds out what happens to this strange narrator.

This is a very quick read, one that can be finished over the course of an afternoon. I would love to hear what others think about this story since there is quite a bit of symbolism in this book that would make excellent topics for discussion.

About The Author:
A morescoAntonio Moresco did not find a publisher until late in his career, after being turned down by several editors. His output is centred on the monumental trilogy L’increato, whose three volumes are: Gli esordi (Feltrinelli 1998, republished by Mondadori in 2011 – 673 pages), Canti del caos (part 1 by Feltrinelli in 2001, part 2 by Rizzoli in 2003; republished by Mondadori in 2009 – 1072 pages), and Gli increati (Mondadori 2015).

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February 21, 2016 · 7:05 pm

Review: The Man I Became by Peter Verhelst

I received a review copy of this title from Peirene Press . It was first published in the original Dutch in 2013 and this English translation has been done by David Colmer.

My Review:
The Man I BecameI don’t normally read Dystopian, Orwellian type novels with talking Gorillas.  But since this book is published by Peirene Press I decided to give it a try anyway and I am glad I did.  The narrator tells us that he was living a happy life in the wild until one day members of his family start disappearing from their idyllic home.  He then finds himself drugged and dragged out of his natural habitat against his will.  He, along with his family, are chained together and forced on an arduous journey during which they are given just enough food and water to survive.  Some of them die along the way and the living are forced to march on and leave their loved ones behind..  I found this to be the most heart wrenching and sad part of the book.  Their fear was palpable and it was difficult to read about these innocent animals as they are taken out of their natural surroundings, and forced on a journey towards the unknown.

After a long ride on a ship in cramped quarters, the animals reach what they call The New World.  They are given clothes, taught how to clean and groom themselves and are given speech lessons.  They practice walking upright, which is very uncomfortable to them and they practice carrying on polite conversations.  It is clear that their captors are trying to turn them into something as close to human as possible.  After a period of time the animals are given a test to see how far their human training has come; they are dressed up and attend a coctail where they meet other animals that have also been trained.  This part of the book is an interesting commentary on what it means to truly be human.  If one can look the right way, and speak the right way and have manners, is that person truly human?  Are a bath, the ability to walk upright and to carry on a conversation really the only things that separate us from animals?

There is one other important social criticism that comes through in the narrative and that is our reliance on technology, especially the cell phone.  When the gorillas reach a certain point in their training they receive a phone and are told that it is their identification and they  must carry it wherever they go.  At first they can only receive calls on their phone and it is another way that their captors keep track of them.  As the narrator becomes more human, he gains more privileges for his phone, such as the ability to dial out to other numbers.  The humans who are in charge of the animals possess multiple phones  and are always seen answering their phones, looking at their phones and talking on their phones.  Is this electronic contraption really another thing that separates us from the animals or does it separate us from other humans and our sense of humanity?

The ending is very interesting and I don’t want to give it away.  But I will say that the gorilla’s life does appear to have a happy ending.  He no longer remembers his previous life and he has found some peace with his human existence.  He is a bit smarter than the rest of his family and he gradually begins to realize that conformity isn’t always the best decision; he questions and investigates his surroundings and those who have positions of authority.  I am sure that there are additional layers of meaning in the story that I did not understand.  I can’t wait to see what other readers make of this story.

This is the first release from Peirene Press this year in their Fairy Tale: End of Innocence series.  The Man I Became is a powerful and thought-provoking first book with which to start the Fairy Tale series and I look forward to the other novellas with great anticipation.  Please visit their website for more details: http://peirenepress.com/

About the Author:
peter_verhelst_0Peter Verhelst, born in 1962, is a Belgian Flemish novelist, poet and playwright. He has written more than 20 books. His work has been praised for its powerful images, the sensuality and richness of its language and the author’s unbridled imagination. His breakthrough came in 1999 with the novel Tonguecat, which won the Golden Owl Literature Prize and the Flemish State Prize for Literature. The Man I Became is his eleventh novel.

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November 17, 2015 · 12:00 am

Review: War, So Much War by Mercè Rodoreda

I received an ARC from Open Letter Press through Edelweiss.  This English edition has been translated by Martha Tennent

My Review:
War So Much WarAdrià Guinart lives in Barcelona with his mother and adopted younger sister.  But at the first chance he gets he leaves his home and joins an unnamed war that is ravaging the countryside.  He is only fifteen-years-old and what he sees while the war is raging forms the bulk of this bizarre and surreal narrative.  The book almost reads like a series of shorts stories, each of which is based on a different character that Adria meets while he is away from home at war.

There is very little fighting or war that Adria actually sees while he is roaming the countryside.  He stumbles upon the after affects of the war by meeting some wretched people along the way.  He meets a woman named Eva who is a miller’s daughter.  The book reads like a fantasy and sometimes the story is very disjointed and his episode with a woman named Eva is a perfect example.  As he is wading in a river with her for a while he learns that she is a miller’s daughter.  Their time together is very brief and when he parts from her he makes his way to the mill that her father owns.  At the mill he is tied up and beaten by the miller and eventually escapes.  He later meets up with Eva again, which second encounter seems even more random than the first.  They have a brief conversation and she leaves him again.

Another strange episode that Adria experiences takes place at a farmhouse that he stumbles upon in the woods.  When he first sees the owner of the house he is mercilessly beating his dog who has stolen a morsel of food.  The farmer explains that there is nothing in this world that he despises more than a thief and so he unleashes his anger on the family pet.  Adria stays with the farmer and his family for about two weeks doing chores for them in exchange for food and shelter.  One night the farmer’s daughters take Adria to a hidden pantry where Adria steals a ham.  When the farmer finds the ham, Adria suffers the same type of vicious beating that the dog received.  At this point he is forced to leave the farmhouse and once again roam the countryside.

The randomness and lack of smooth transitions from one scene to the next give the book a dreamlike quality.  It’s as if we have a front row seat to a viewing of Adria’s never ending nightmare.  Adria comes upon a castle whose owner has been tied up and held hostage in his own home.  He then wanders off once again and finds a girl on a beach who pledges her undying loyalty to him.  When he rejects her, she walks into the sea and commits suicide.  While walking along the sea Adria encounters a beach house where the owner welcomes him and feeds him.  He ends up staying with the man who owns the beach house, Senyor Ardevol,  for weeks and when the man dies he leaves his home and his possessions to Adria.

For the second part of the book Adria meets a series of interesting characters on the road whose stories are told in greater length.  Adria starts with Ardevol’s story and how he came to live in the beach house and how he came to see the strange image in the mirror in his foyer.  Adria also meets a cat man, a hermit and a man with a never-ending appetite, all of whom have strange tales to tell.  Even with the shift of focus in the book from Adria himself to the people he meets on the road, the stories in the second part of the book are just as fantastical and surreal as Adria’s experiences in the first part.

I have mixed feelings about this book but I think that is due to my preference for more realistic fiction.  The overall idea of the book is interesting but some of the shorter encounters of the main character, especially in the first half of the book, did not keep my attention.  Has anyone else read any other books by Mercè Rodoreda?  I am wondering if they are similar to this title.

 

About the Author:
Merce RMercè Rodoreda i Gurguí was a Spanish / Catalan novelist.

She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel “La plaça del diamant” (‘The diamond square’, translated as ‘The Time of the Doves’, 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 20 languages. It’s also considered by many to be best novel dealing with the Spanish Civil War.

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