This novella recently got a bit of press and it sounded intriguing so I checked it out. It's a brief story about a family arriving at a large chateau in France. It's written in spare language but manages to set an enveloping gothic mood. The various characters in this extended family have some serious issues that they are dealing with. The central character, a woman, arrives with a broken arm and covered in yellowing bruises. Her sister-in-law arrives with her stillborn baby cradled in her arms. The whole effect is creepy and bizarre in a good way. It's a dark, poetic story. I'd be interested to see what this author does next. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Heavy readers know that there's a specific format in literature out there that's not only difficult to know what to do with, but is indeed designed specifically for a small niche crowd to begin with -- character-oriented novellas, that is, written by academes for other academes, stories too long for most magazines but too short to make for a compelling full-length book, which then tend to get published as these strange little overpriced booklet things destined to appeal only to fellow professors and the like. For example, take last year's Disquiet by Barnard College teacher Julia Leigh; it's barely over a hundred pages even with the most spaced-out text you've ever seen, with a storyline that consists almost entirely of people sitting around a rural French home talking to each other, a project that from page one is fated to be enjoyed only by existing fans of, say, Don DeLillo or Ian McEwan. And for what it is, I guess it's not too bad, although admittedly I'm not much of a fan of these kinds of stories myself; plus I have to confess, the central conceit of this novella (the idea that liberal European doctors would send a traumatized couple home with their stillborn baby, to "bond" with the cadaver for a few days before burying it) is a concept I found so ridiculous as to completely remove me from the story being told, and especially when it came to such details as the need to keep the tiny little dead body in the freezer at night to avoid rotting, or the forcing of the alive children in the house to cuddle and coo the corpse to the sound of their horrified squeals. I mean, I get it, EU radical liberals are crazy, I'm not disputing that; but seriously, what reputable doctor in their right mind would possibly ever advocate something like this? It felt way too much like a smartass professor trying to impress me with a ludicrously unrealistic story premise; and that's how a lot of these academic character-oriented novellas feel to me, which is why I'm not much of a fan of academic character-oriented novellas. This certainly isn't badly written, and will for sure appeal to some of you out there, which is why it's getting the score it is; unfortunately, though, I'm just not one of those people.

Out of 10: 7.7 ( )

It's hard rating a book in stars. I wanted to give it 4 and a half, because perfection is surely unattainable.

A novella: a short read, at 121 pages, but not an easy one. The language is clear, it's the concepts that are difficult, which is what makes a book memorable, I think.

The woman, who the narrator only refers to as "the woman", but others call by her name, Olivia, arrives with her two children, at the European mansion of her mother. She's worse for wear with a broken arm. She and her children have just arrived from Australia, escaped from a bad domestic situation, though the details aren't spelled out. The woman is traumatised.

Olivia's sister-in-law, Sophie, is also traumatised. She has just given birth to a dead baby girl, which arrives at the house cradling in her arms. The whole family deals with the trauma of the two women over the next few days. Olivia suffers another shock but overcomes the challenge and effects a solution to Sophie's problem.

This novella is a creeper. I don't know how all that sadness, those themes and all that conflict were packed into 121 pages. Julia Leigh's prose is masterful, haunting. I will be thinking about this book for a long time. I think I will have to read it again before I return it to the library. ( )

Why did Toni Morrison praise this book? Why did Coetzee praise it? I think there must be a story behind both. Perhaps the quotations on the book are taken out of context.

Leigh is a weak writer, who hides her weakness beneath a veneer of austerity. Sometimes her brief hints, truncated descriptions, and elliptical conversations work well, creating a sense of impending tragedy: but in many cases, the episodes just seem to be poorly imagined. Every novelist knows the difficulty of fleshing out ideas, and many passages in this book have all the telltale signs of ideas that the author was unable to expand. (One example: the episode of the stolen cellphone, elaborated at length during the stealing and then never followed up, either in terms of consequences or in terms of narrative.)

It doesn't help that the ultra-rich French milieu of the protagonists is conjured only with clichés. "Each room was elegantly, if minimally, finished. A pair of Qing dynasty glazed porcelain bases, kingfisher-blue. A silken Persian carpet": the passage could be read as an allegory of the book as a whole: nearly empty scenes, sparsely furnished with clichés.

Instead of this, read the book that shares, in English, its title: Pessoa's magnificent, half-crazy, pessimistic, virtuoso "Book of Disquietude." Five hundred pages, a handful of clichés. ( )

The Review

My friend, Danielle, lent me this book because she thought I may enjoy this novella. The author’s writing style is very calming despite the unrest and emotional horror of the story. It’s almost like the reader is lulled into this story, rides along it peacefully, and then BAM! The reader is hit with a shocker! Back onto the smooth road and all is well. WHOOSH! The reader takes a sharp right hand turn! And, so it goes until we are finally able to complete the drive and arrive at the destination which is an ending that brings peace back to the reader. Whew!

I enjoyed this book for many reasons. First, I love the concept of a novella. You get more than a short story and you’re not tied into 300+ pages of a story that has a lot of “fluff” in it. This story was written with as much “fluff” and character development as you needed, however it was true to the story and staying on point. Maybe a better way of putting it is that the writing was controlled and yet engaging.

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

I am fortunate to be reviewing not only this novella, but another one that I read within the same day. I liked them both. But, of the two, I preferred this one. Therefore, it’s going to get slightly higher marks. For the genre Fiction:Novella, I am going to rate this book a 9 OUT OF 10.

My thanks to my pal, Danielle, for the “sweet” read! ( )