**March is Read a Novella Month!

Ok, I admit that I made this up (are you really surprised?)*, but I thought it would be fun to explore and celebrate the novella form.

While definitions of novellas vary, they are a work of prose fiction approximately 20,000 - 50,000 words, or roughly 50-100 pages of the 'normal' book size (based on about 450 words per average book page). A smaller-sized book may have more pages. They are sometimes published as individual, small or thin books or included in short fiction collections.

Here's something on the subject that I came across recently "On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon Myself" from Uncensored: Views & (Re) views by Oates.

"Henry James described the novella as the 'blessed form.' It is also a very difficult, even hazardous form, neither a novel in miniature nor a pumped-up short story, but something quite distinct, if definable. My sense of the novella is that of a rapturously extended prose poem driven by narrative..."

Here's a nice bit about the novella, that talks about some classic novellas like Melville's Billy Budd and Mann's Death in Venice.

Here's the wikipedia entry on the subject.

An article from the Guardian titled, "Can the Novella Save Literature?".

I'm sure we all have novellas sitting in our TBR piles, if not, they are easily found - classic or contemporary, notable author or not! I thought we could all read at least one during the month of March and post our review or comments here, bearing in mind the comments about the form posted here. Please consider joining us!

*I've adapted this from a similar challenge made on the JCOates group.

Edited to fix typo on the month

Great idea, Lois! I'll read the six novellas in Selected Stories by Stefan Zweig, which I bought for lilisin's Author Theme Read.

BTW, Melville House Publishing, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has released a number of classic and modern novellas as part of its Art of the Novella series.

I read a lot of those so why not :)

Sounds fun -- two that I'm eager to get to: The Awakening by Kate Chopin and of course Chess Story by Stefan Zweig.

It's often said that the novella is the natural form for science fiction - long enough to lay out the author's concept, then reach a compelling finish. So I often read things at that length. I'll also, as avaland and I discussed offline, read a Joyce Carol Oates novella.

I just got Mahfouz's Before the Throne as an LTER -- March sounds like a good time to read that one.

Russian lit is full of these things. If anyone wants a list, I'm happy to oblige.

I think I shall sow read more Oates (she has 9 listed novellas of which I have only read 4 and because I'm promoting a similar novella read on the group devoted to her writing) but I also will look around the rest of the month and see what else drops my path.

Lois, Did you mean March? Your initial post says both March and May.

I have a Mahfouz that I think qualifies: 102 pages and big print. The Day the Leader was Killed.

I have several; this will be fun.

>9 LisaCurcio: Thanks for pointing that out. I mean March. Will edit.

I hope I can fit a teeny tiny novella in between "Building the Kingdom: Giannozzo Manetti on the Material and Spiritual Edifice" and selections from Nietzche.

7>> I just bought the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of Chekhov's Complete Short Novels in Everyman.

Excellent! I'd be happy to know what you think of the translation.

I'm in - I've got Death in Venice sitting on my soon to be read pile and am sure I can track down a few other things on my shelves.

I'd like to think I could manage this seemingly easy task. At the very least I'll follow along to see all the Zweig readers. :)

Raymond Chandler's short stories average out at slightly more than sixty pages of small print apiece. I've pulled them out in preparationl.

I have picked out several books from my shelves that seem to fit the bill - some of them are over 100 pages, but if so, they all have either small pages or large print! I'm asking for a bit of help choosing which one to go for.

I am also gathering ideas from my TBR; two of them are Joseph Roth's Weights and Measures and The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy.

I've got a few books that could be classified as novellas being sent to me through BookMooch... I just hope they get to me before March. This sounds like it would be fun.

Maybe after a month of novellas I can muster up the gumption to read Anna Karenina in April.

Hmm. I have been thinking on novellas since I first posted here - thinking back on what I've read and whether it qualifies as a "...extended prose poem driven by narrative", as Oates describes (quoted in post#1).

Certainly some of the novellas I've read were very lyrical or written in the way that suggests it swings more towards the poetic. I think I enjoy these the most.

The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi
Tinkers by Paul Harding
I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates
Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser
"The Hunger Strike" in Everything in This Country Must by Colum McCann

However, others like Roth's Goodbye, Columbus or Domínguez' The House of Paper did not (imo, of course). I'm intrigued to see how my future readings measure up...

edited to fix touchstones

Count me in! I have a bound volume of three novellas by RK Narayan that's starting to look quite appealing, and another by Nina Berberova, which I may finally get to.

I'm planning to read several out of:

The Aspern Papers by Henry James
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Fup by Jim Dodge
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

This is a great way to reduce my TBR pile!

I'll be reading Fup too.

I'm also looking at reducing my TBR, and am consdiering:

Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth
No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon
Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez
The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Complete Short Novels by Anton Chekhov

and perhaps others I haven't unearthed yet.

I am eager to get started, but want to finish the tome I am reading, Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen first.

The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind (novella, German author, 1987, translation 1988)

An older middle-aged reclusive and fearful man lives an orderly, simple, contented life, by day ironically as a bank guard in Paris; that is, until an ordinary pigeon unhinges it all. And it is within the unhinging that a discovery is made. This is an enjoyable tale, slyly wittiy, and just about the right length. Just as you cannot take any more of this man's unhinging, something happens.

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, 2000, translation 2002)

Set during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, this tiny book succinctly tells a moving story of grief and despair. Dastaguir and his grandson, Yassir, is waiting by the gatehouse of a mine for a vehicle to come along in which they will be able to catch a ride many miles to the mine itself where Dastaguir's son (Yassir's father) is working. While they wait, the reader gets the backstory of how they have come to be there.

This is the last of Rahimi's three published works that I had to read. I read earlier, his more recent titles: A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear and The Patience Stone were translated from the French, the language of the author's adopted country. All of these have been excellently told, skillfully rendered in a prose that wastes no words.

Technically, this might not even be a novella, I estimate about 16,000 words at most. It's 50 pages in large type in a small format book.

Finished Death in Venice, review up sometime tomorrow. One thought I had on the form was the importance of quickly introducing the character.

I also was a little bad and went out and bought some novellas:

The Lesson of the Master by Henry James
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger
The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo
Ourika by Claire de Duras
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The Stranger by Albert Camus*
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse*

*A little longer than a novella

28 -
The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo!!!

I'll be looking forward to see what you think of this. I read this last year and loved it. But I also really like Hugo. :)

>28 janemarieprice: I found that I had read so many of the novellas that are classics that I aimed more contemporary, although your list intrigues me.

I definitely like the succinctness of the novella form.

--------

"The Corn Maiden" by Joyce Carol Oates, as found in Transgressions Vol. 4 edited by Ed McBain.

Eleven-year-old Marissa is lured into captivity by the disturbed fourteen-year-old Jude and her minions. Jude is obsessed with an old Indian ritual calling for the sacrifice of the Corn Maiden. Alternately told in the voices of Jude, or her accomplishes, and also by a narrator who gives us the viewpoint and voices of Marissa's devastated and desperate mother and a falsely accused male teacher, this spiraling narrative is crammed with emotions and psychological suspense almost to the very end. And I found the 'almost' intriguing also.

For this series, Mr. McBain asked notable authors to write an original novella with some connection to crime, mystery or suspense. As he states about the novella form, "It ain't easy to write!"

Read two novellas from a volume by R.K. Narayan called The Grandmother’s Tale. The title story is about a young girl who is betrothed, according to the custom, at a tender age. Convention dictates that the young boy and girl don’t live together, and each continues to live with their parents. The boy goes to great lengths to get his wife’s attention and to talk to her; but she will have almost nothing to do with him – again, as convention dictates. But, he definitely gets her attention.

Because she seems so disinterested, he packs up and leaves the village to seek his fortune. The result: she waits around for him to surface as he usually does, and then pines for him, and when she can no longer wait around, she packs her bags and goes in search of him, something unheard of in this very traditional Indian environment. But this is only the beginning of the story! It becomes much more interesting :)

The second one, “Salt and Sawdust”, is about an aspiring writer, Veena, whose indulgent husband, Swami, adores her and does everything for her so she can concentrate solely on her writing. In spite of all the time and effort he expends in providing for her every comfort and need as a writer, and beyond, she’s not all that productive. The story is quite funny with a lovely twist. It was very entertaining and I really enjoyed Narayan’s writing overall.

Picture a distant planet, populated by humanoids who are very different color and stature from us. These planetary dwellers use roughly neolithic technology and exist in a state of harmony with their planet. All its land is covered by forest, which they revere. Militarized visitors from a future, ecologically devastated Earth aim at stripping the planet of its resources, crushing the natives to do so. A sympathetic scientist with the Earth expedition studies and befriends the locals, and tries futilely to soften the harshness of the military onslaught. The natives finally fight back and drive the visitors off.

Sound familiar?

I'm describing, not James Cameron's recent Avatar, but "The Word for World is Forest," a 1972 novella by Ursula K. LeGuin. Cameron has acknowledged his debt to earlier science fiction but not, as far as I know, to LeGuin.

LeGuin's story has differences, of course: the Athsheans ("creechies" to the humans with guns) are green-furred, not blue, and half human height. The forest and its people are much more peaceful than Cameron's. The planet's living things share a common origin with Earth's, and the humans may breathe the air, eat the plants and animals - and exploit the locals much more handily. But the beauties of exploring a distant planet, the best part of a planetary romance, compare well:

All the colors of rust and sunset, brown-reds and pale greens, changed ceaselessly in the long leaves as the wind blew. The roots of the copper willows, thick and ridged, were moss-green down by the running water, which like the wind moved slowly with many soft eddies and seeming pauses, held back by rocks, roots, hanging and fallen leaves. No way was clear, no light unbroken, in the forest. Into wind, water, sunlight, starlight, there always entered leaf and branch, bole and root, the shadowy, the complex. Little paths ran under the branches, around the boles, over the roots; they did not go straight, but yielded to every obstacle, devious as nerves. The ground was not dry and solid but damp and rather springy, product of the collaboration of living things with the long, elaborate death of leaves and trees; and from that rich graveyard grew ninety-foot trees, and tiny mushrooms that sprouted in circles half an inch across. The smell of the air was subtle, various and sweet. The view was never long, unless looking up therough the branches you caught sight of the stars. Nothing was pure, dry, arid, plain. Revelation was lacking. There was no seeing everything at once; no certainty. The colors of rust and sunset kept changing in the hanging leaves of the copper willows, and you could not say even whether the leaves of the willows were brownish-red, or reddish-green, or green.

That common origin implies an irony: we really can see such scenes as the excerpt now, here, although they are gone from LeGuin's future Earth, "a desert of cement." We need not go to the cinema for them. Throughout the story LeGuin, a Taoist, continues this contrast of the hard, linear and enlightened with the locals' indirection, flexibility and dreaming. The natives' victory is qualified, ominous.

LeGuin has admitted dissatisfaction with this story, which was written out of anger at the Vietnam War, as I recall. But it's nonetheless superb, and offers an important contrast with our current enthusiam for 10-foot blue humanoids.

Because there's one very important difference from Avatar. The Athsheans do not need a noble Earthman to save them; they do it themselves. Friendship exists between the races in a few cases, but there's no romantic connection.

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs published "Under the Moons of Mars," starting a century of planetary romance as a common type of science fiction. Burroughs has been cited by Cameron - John Carter goes to Mars, marries a princess and becomes the planet's Warlord.

In 1972, LeGuin published this novella, far darker, more thoughtful and complex. In 2009, Cameron took us back to 1912.

>32 dukedom_enough: why novella and not novel, do you think?

>33 Belletrista: sorry about that, I was signed in on my laptop as that other entity... (who doesn't exist on LT as a single person). However, the question remains.

Why a novella? Don't know. Maybe: if you want to write a polemic, the shorter form is more focused?

Excellent, this provides an excuse to dip into my Stories of Heinrich Böll! Although, Murr, I'm willing to accept recs if you're still willing to share them.

I'm reading Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs. At 88 pages, it's a slim little volume. Maybe I can finish it during what's left of my lunch break.

I get a warm feeling any time someone mentions The Country of the Pointed Firs. I hope you are enjoying it.

Robert

My novella's so far...(reviews repeated from my Club Read thread so apologies if you've already seen these)

Chess by Stefan Zweig

This basis of this intense novella is a chess match aboard a cruise ship between the world grand master and an unknown but seemingly brilliant player. The man says he hasn't played chess for more than 20 years yet he knows all the moves to counter the champion. As the game goes on the unknown man becomes more and more agitated and seems to descend into a kind of madness. I won't explain more about how he learnt so many chess moves, but it's a harrowing story.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

In 1714 the Bridge of San Luis Rey in Lima breaks, sending five people to their deaths. Brother Juniper, a local monk, wants to understand the meaning behind this event - was it God's plan or an accident? He investigates the lives of the five who died to see if they were deserving of death. Of course, the book evidence he compiles shows human beings who are much more complex than he expected. It's not a case of the good people being called to heaven and the bad people going to their destruction.

The original book was burned for being heretical (probably by the Inquisition!) but an unnamed narrator presents the stories to the reader from a secret copy of the book.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is an interesting novella. I liked reading about the people who died and the thought of them walking across the bridge to move into the next part of the lives, but never making it, was sad. I think some of the philosophical points were lost on me though.

Fup by Jim Dodge

A lovely little story about an old man, his grandson and their duck, Fup. Funny and sad by turns with a bit of magic thrown in.

My first novella for the month is The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy. In this lovely and perceptive novella, the beauty of the Caucasus region, where, the Russians are fighting with the Chechens -- its mountains, streams, forests, and wildlife -- jumps off the page. Tolstoy also portrays the wilder, "simpler" lives of the Cossacks who live there, lives that seem so attractive to his somewhat naive protagonist, a young Moscow aristocrat, Olenin, who joins the Russian army largely as a way to keep himself from gambling, running up debts, and leading a dissolute life. (This, in fact, mirrors some of Tolstoy's own experiences as a young man.) He meets some of the local people, goes hunting, and then falls in love, or so he thinks, with the daughter of his landlord, who is also loved by one of the young Cossacks. One of the beauties of the book is that the reader simultaneously sees the world through Olenin's eyes and through the more experienced eyes of the author.

Two so far:

Three reasons to enjoy The Young Visiters (sic) by Daisy Ashford, written in 1890 and published in 1919:

1) For its storylines of romance and social advancement -- the foreword proclaims it “a Victorian novel in miniature.”

2) For its nine-year-old author, though to be clear this isn't a story about children, nor necessarily even one for child readers. Ashford's spelling is often phonetic (she especially loves sumshious) and the subtext is funny, even racy; yet she senses the needs of readers and is versant on the concerns of adults (including men).

3) For its literary dustup, where (especially in the USA) J.M. Barrie’s preface (not included in my edition) prompted questions about whether Ashford or Barrie really wrote the book. (This 1920 NY Times article (pdf) concludes for the child, as does history.)

----------

The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre (translated from the French by Jordan Stump) is set on the outskirts of modern-day Paris in a small cafe owned by a husband and wife. When the husband disappears, the wife and tiny staff forge on: Amedee the Senegalese cook, Madeleine the new waitress, and Pierre (the narrator), the bartender who’s nearing retirement after a complicated life.

I love work-based stories and this one is lovely, melancholy and full, very much like Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster. I read a library copy but this is one to buy -- re-readable and pleasing to look at. It’s Fabre’s only book available in English; I hope more will be translated.

Now we're cookin'!

I got my review up for Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Gustav Aschenbach, writer and nobleman, spurred by artistic restlessness, embarks on a trip to Venice. Once there he falls in love with a beautiful young boy. Meanwhile, Venice is dealing with an epidemic. Aschenbach slowly succumbs to both the disease of the body and the temptations of his own mind.

Aschenbach’s obsession with the boy Tadzio is extremely complex, an aspect that made the stalking relationship . Tadzio is both an object of art and a vestige of Aschenbach’s lost youth. “Icon and mirror!” Ultimately, Aschenbach’s inability to escape his excess is a mark of his artistic nature – what today we would consider living on the fringe becomes damning. “We may deny the abyss and acquire dignity but, no matter how we try, it attracts us.” Mann was convinced that any artist could only deny their passions for so long.

Even in translation, one can see what a gifted writer Mann is. The story is meticulously crafted. Varying motifs are repeated throughout, piecing together parts of the story and larger classical references. But my favorite portions were Mann’s observations on the human mind – things I have thought from time to time but wondered if anyone else ever thought this way. Deep insights that become silly in a few moments of thought:

“Weary and yet mentally agitated, he spent the protracted mealtime considering abstract, in fact transcendental matters; he reflected on the mysterious combination of regularity and individuality that is requisite for the creation of human beauty; this led him to general problems of form and art; and finally he concluded that these thoughts and discoveries of his resembled those apparently felicitous inspirations in dreams which, when you are fully awake again, prove to be totally insipid and worthless.”

And the daily interactions of strangers:

“Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily – no, hourly – and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim. Between them there exists a disquiet, a strained curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally repressed need for recognition and exchange of thoughts – and also, especially, a sort of nervous respect.”

Next up is The Last of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo and The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

#41, I went to a wedding last year where one of the readings was from The Young Visiters - can't remember it exactly, but it was Daisy Ashford's view of what happens after the couple is married! It was really sweet and charming.

>44 wandering_star: haha, if I remember, the couple (who knew each other only briefly before marriage) honeymooned for a week or a month ... and came home with a baby!

>43 janemarieprice: a lovely refresher for a book read ages ago. Thanks, Jane.

Visited a village in Nigeria with Buchi Emecheta's The Moonlight Bride. I've wanted to read this author for the longest time so am happy to have made her acquaintance finally!

The narrator, a 12-year old girl and her 14-year-old friend find out that a new bride will be coming to their village, and it'll happen in the moonlight. There is a shroud of mystery around the event, but they are very excited and plan to make clay pots and lamps for the bride, to welcome her to the family. On the day they go to fetch the clay from the ground a long way from home, they are confronted by a ginormous python, and this sets a wholes series of events in motion.

This lovely visit into a very traditional African village. It was fairly good! I think it would probably qualify as a YA book.

edit: awful spelling oops..

The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates (1977)

This is a disturbing little novella that places us in the head of handsome Bobby Gotteson—the 'Maniac', the spider monkey of the title—a clearly insane mass murderer (and amateur singer/songwriter), on trial for hacking a woman to death with a machete.

A longer review is on my thread, but suffice it to say that I find when Oates sets out to deliberately disturb us, it is with intent, and not just to upset us emotionally, but meant to knock us out of our comfort zone and get us to think in a different way than we are accustomed to.

This was made into a play in the 80s, produced in L.A. starring Shaun Cassidy.

"The International Shop of Coffins" in How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique (2010)

I found this book while browsing in a bookstore and it not only looked intriguing but, because the author is from the Virgin Islands and because it was subtitle "a novella and stories" I thought I could read it both for this novella read and for the Reading Globally read. But then I realized none of the stories jumped out at me as novella length, so I assumed the longest one, "The International Shop of Coffins," was meant to be the novella although, at 58 pages, I think it could also be considered a long short story. I also feel I can only talk about this novella in the context of the other stories.

In deceptively simple language, Yanique tells stories of people on various Caribbean islands who are in some way isolated, grieving, confused, uprooted, not (as one of her characters put it) at home-home, as opposed to the more simple home. Her characters and their situations stayed with me as I read through the stories, some of which, such as the title story, have elements of the fantastical. But . . . I have a quibble, and that is that after reading the whole collection I see Yanique using some of the same elements in story after story: coincidence, something from the beginning of a story "explained" at the end, exact repetitions of text to show how different people perceived the same event. It all works, in the context of individual stories, but I was disappointed to see it over and over again; as a reader, I then noticed what the writer was doing instead of being completely absorbed in the story. That said, I did enjoy and was moved by the stories and the characters, and I think Yanique is excellent at portraying the lives, concerns, and souls of people in a postcolonial, migratory world.

>49 rebeccanyc: I put this into Belletrista's N&N this issue, so it is good to see that I made a good choice;-) Great review, sounds interesting!

This is the one that broke my good intention of only reading books I already owned for group reads! And I bought it before I read this issue of Belletrista.

But I'm making a lot of headway in working through the novellas on my TBR -- more reviews soon.

i read Right Ho, Jeeves courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

>51 rebeccanyc: yes, I know you did and I took your review as confirmation that great minds think alike;-) I think I saw (on FaceBook*) that the author was making an appearance at a bookstore in Brooklyn recently...

*Weird coincidence. The person who introduced me to LT opened a bookstore in Brooklyn recently, so I follow some of their doings.

Yesterday I read Selected Stories by Stefan Zweig, a collection of four novellas and two short stories that was published by Pushkin Press last year.

The novellas are:

Fantastic Night (1922): An account of a bored and emotionally impotent Viennese man of leisure who is transformed by a series of incredible circumstances that allows him to experience live fully (4 stars).

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922): The highlight of the book, in which a noted author and man about town receives a mysterious letter from a woman who has loved him since childhood, unbeknownst to him. This was the most heartbreaking story I've read in a long time, and I was wiping away tears at several points during the woman's description of her tragic life. The full text of this novella is available here (5 stars, and at least one box of facial tissues).

Buchmendel (1929): A story about a Russian Jew, Jacob Mendel, a second hand book dealer who holds court in a café until he falls afoul of the police during the Great War (4-1/2 stars).

Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927): An English woman shares her story of her attempt to save the life of a handsome young man who is consumed by gambling, and contemplating suicide (4 stars).

Overall, I thought this was a very good selection, although only Letter from an Unknown Woman compares favorably to my other favorite Zweig novellas, Amok, Chess Story and Journey into the Past.

#53 I believe she teaches in New Jersey, at Drew University, so it isn't surprising that she gave a reading in Brooklyn.

The Beacon by Susan Hill (novella, 2008, UK author)

The Beacon is a story of family, anger, loss, and memory. The Beacon is the name of the farmhouse and family homestead and in the first few pages of this story we learn that the aged mother has just passed away (the father had passed away years earlier) . The one middle-aged sibling still at home - May - must, of course, notify the proper authorities and her siblings --- but not Frank, the younger of the two boys. Frank will not be told of the mother's death because of what he has done.

And herein lies the intrigue. Laced between the story of family notification and funeral preparations, the reader is given the background, mostly from the viewpoint of May, of this farm family. It's beautifully written in a subdued tone and leads us headlong into Frank's transgression and its devastating consequences, before bringing us back around to the present and confrontation. As I expected from Hill, she leaves us with a delicious tiny question mark at the end.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez (1981, translated 1982)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez (2004, translation 2005)

I decided to read these two novellas by García Márquez back to back, first the earlier one and then the most recent one, and I'm glad I read them in that order.

I really enjoyed Chronicle of a Death Foretold which explores the life of a community, communal guilt, and the concept of family honor all with García Márquez's usual command of place, detail, and characters. I would call it "delightful" except that that is probably the wrong word to use for a tale in which the reader knows from the first sentence that someone is going to be murdered.

I cannot say the same for Memories of My Melancholy Whores, the reflections of a man who has never had sex with a woman he hasn't paid for who decides, for his 90th birthday, that he wants to sleep with a 14-year-old virgin. And sleep both of them do, no sex at all, and he falls in love for the first time in his life and thinks about on his past. I wanted to like this novella better, because I wanted to experience a 90-year-old reflecting on his life, but I ended up feeling, so what?

By the way, Chronicle of a Death Foretold has been on my TBR for 25 years, so thank you, Lois, for spurring me to finally read it.

>57 rebeccanyc: You're welcome (?) I was just looking yesterday at my copy of that specific Márquez but decided against reading it now.

54 - Letter from an Unknown Woman was made into a movie in 1948. They had a segment about it on TCM the other night. Sounded very good. Thanks for posting the link to the story.

Yesterday I spent a few hours with Sheila Watson, reading Deep Hollow Creek. Watson is a little-known Canadian author who I was introduced to in a university course on Modern Canadian Literature. Her novel The Double Hook is one of my favourites, and the main text I studied for my Honours Thesis. Watson was not the most profuse of authors, and so these two books, plus a collection of five short stories, make up her entire bibliography. Most sources classify Deep Hollow Creek as a novel, but at just over 100 pages, I think it qualifies for novella status.

Though Deep Hollow Creek was published in 1992, Watson wrote it in the 1930s, following a stint as a teacher in northern British Columbia. She drew heavily on her own experiences; her protagonist, Stella, is teacher to a handful of children in Deep Hollow Creek, BC, a small settlement dominated by the Flowers family. Since Stella is the newcomer in a tight-knit community, she learns the history of her neighbours through the gossipy stories they tell about each other.

Watson's novella definitely falls into Oates' definition in Post #1 - her writing is always more poetic than prosaic. Her sparse style echoes the wild, uncivilized landscape she describes, and the rather lonely lives of her characters. Stella is a literary woman thrust into a land far removed from the university scene, and it is here that she learns the power of language:

If I hadn't come here, she said, I doubt whether I should ever have seen through the shroud of printers' ink, through to the embalmed essence. The word is a flame burning in a dark glass.

I love this image, this weight that Watson gives to words. Neither Deep Hollow Creek nor The Double Hook are long, page-wise, but that is because Watson puts so much power into every word. This is an incredible piece of writing.

The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz.

Sometimes one's reaction to a book threatens to overpower anything the author might be trying to say in a book, and so it is with this novella for me.

In short, a once youthful idealist who fought for social change in the 1930s now finds himself twenty years later a wealthy, successful and well-regarded lawyer in Cairo and suffers a midlife crisis. Much internal and external brooding over life, the meaning and everything ensues. He fears irrelevancy. He races his car along the highway, he takes up with high class prostitutes, all while his family suffers. I was initially sympathetic to Omar, but my sympathy was short-lived. I want to shake him! (a fuller rant is on my thread) I'm so disgusted with him that I really don't give a fig about discussions of art, science, poetry, the meaning of life...etc. and I ignore the crisis as metaphor for Egypt's own "midlife" crisis.

Did Mahfouz intend such a reaction? I think not. I'm pretty sure I was not his intended audience.

ETA: There is a lovely review of the book on LT which gives all the appropriate analysis of this book.

Ick. I like Mahfouz, but I'll certainly avoid this book.

I'm reading The Passport, a 92 page novella by Herta Müller. Review soon...

This sounds like a good excuse to get away from the long novels I am reading. Thanks. It's either a blessing or a curse. Now where to begin?

Chateau d'Argol by Julien Gracq (1938, translation 1999)

The more I read in this novella the more I didn't understand it.

Than I read a discussion of it on this thread and I realized that I didn't have the literary or philosophical background to understand it: references to Hegel, allusions to the Parsifal legend, symbolism galore, etc. It all went right by me.

What I did get was beautiful but totally overwrought pictures of a mysterious old castle in a deep forest and haunting landscape: sentences overloaded with descriptive details, adjectives piled up on adjectives, phrases piled up on phrases. Quite remarkable writing. But with the characters who are clearly symbols more than they are characters and an episodic structure in which it was not always clear (to me, anyway) what was going on, I was way way way out of my depth.

I finished The Country of the Pointed Firs and really liked it! I want to read more of Jewett's work.

I completing this challenge without knowing is was a challenge by reading Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov. It's a chilling little narrative of lust and murder, and all the more effective by being free of the excessive moralising that some 19th century Russian authors - you know who you are - like to indulge in.

I don't have it in front of me now, but it was about 65 pages long.

>66 timjones: I think that was a Hesperus title, Tim, and therefore guaranteed a novella;-)

The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo

Hugo’s polemic against the death penalty is crafted as more of an emotional reaction than a political rant (though that appears in the preface). At first the condemned man believes that “death is infinitely to be preferred” to a life of hard labor; however, as his diary continues, we journey through his thoughts as execution day looms.

Up next, The Awakening and The House on Mango Street.

>67 avaland:, avaland: Good point - and thank you!

(with apologies for cross-posting - this is also on the Reading Globally Caribbean thread):

I've read A State Of Independence by Caryl Phillips, which covers a few days in the life of Bertram Francis, who returns to St Kitts just before independence after twenty years in the UK. In a sort of reverse Small Island, he arrives with high expectations, but the people closest to him, far from welcoming him back, seem to want to teach him a lesson - his mother, his former girl, and an old schoolfriend who is now a government minister, and like all politicians, obsessed with the future but not above settling scores from the past.

As well as the personal story, the book wonders whether the Caribbean island was really gaining independence, or exchanging a formal relationship with the UK for cultural and economic dependence on the US.

I found this a fairly slight read, although in the final quarter of the book, Bertram started to take shape as a character, and began to find his direction.

Oh, dear. I seem to have slipped off the novella bandwagon. However, I have just ordered a book called that has three contemporary Chinese novellas and ordered two forthcoming Hesperus titles (they are all novellas). Won't come in time though. Honestly, I think it was that Grenville novel that distracted me and steered me to the dark other side:-)

I am enjoying others' adventures though.

I've just finished The Aspern Papers by Henry James about a man who will go to great lengths to get what he wants. Melodramatic and unbelievable.

Last night I read:

Chess Story - Stefan Zweig

My thanks to Darryl for first mentioning Zweig last year, and to all the LTers who have been giving him rave reviews this year. Chess Story was the kind of five-star read that makes me reconsider my other five-star novels, and whether or not they really deserve that distinction. I was blown away by the depth of this novella - really, I think there was more happening here than in most full-length novels. The characterization was incredible; in just over 80 pages, Zweig creates four complex, memorable people: our unnamed narrator, McConnor, Czentovic, and Dr. B. I was amazed at the details Zweig included, from Czentovic's background to the narrator's obsession with monomaniacs (which really, makes him a monomaniac himself).

The other stunning aspect of Chess Story is the psychological tension that envolopes the reader. From Dr. B's horrifying story to the intense last game of chess, Zweig succeeds in creating an atmosphere of edge-of-your-seat anticipation. Chess Story drags you in immediately, and spits you out 84 pages later with your mind still reeling.

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi

This haunting novella is narrated by Dastaguir, a middle aged man who travels to the coal mine where his son Murad is working, in order to inform him of the tragedy that has befallen their village during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. Dastaguir travels with Murad's mischevious son Yassin, who struggles to understand what has happened to himself and his family. Dastaguir is deeply affected by the event, and fearful of the reaction of his volatile son once he finds out what has happened. Rahimi paints a simple and economical yet unforgettable and affecting story, which I highly recommend.

Of note, Earth and Ashes was a bestselling book in Europe and South America, and Rahimi directed a movie based on the book that won 25 awards, including the Prix du Regard vers l'Avenir at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Close to Jedenew by Kevin Vennemann

Close to Jedenew is a stream of consciousness novella narrated by a young Jewish girl in a small town in Poland, whose Jewish population is slaughtered by local villagers during World War II. She and the younger members of the family remain in hiding while local farmers conduct their rampage against their former neighbors and friends. The story initially reads like a fairy tale, then jumps back and forth between present and past events, which made it difficult to follow until its ending. This was a curious and mysterious work, which requires close attention and possibly multiple readings to appreciate it fully.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – I am glad I read this during the day.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros – A series of vignettes about the life of a young Hispanic girl growing up in Chicago.

I finished JCO's "First Love" - a creepy, Gothic novella (with equally creepy, dark woodblock prints by Barry Mosher) about the relationship between an 11 year old girl and a 25 year old pedophile seminary student. This novella didn't resonant in any way for me and, although it wasn't generally lyrical prose, there were some wonderful lines in it that I couldn't help but read out loud.

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Classic tale of late Victorian inventor/scientist creates time machine and travels to the future. Doesn't like what he sees, much scope for discussing what makes humans successful, happy and stable. Will do a proper review on my thread when I'm not sat at a train station like I am now!

My latest Early Reviewer book is a novella - Beside The Sea by Veronique Olmi. I think it's a good example of a book which couldn't be longer or shorter: it is about a few days in the life of a woman who is on the edge of desperation, and it's a phenomenal imagining of what it would be like to be inside her head. There isn't space for a lot of development - she is already at that point where everything is too much - so it couldn't have been a longer novel. But at the same time, you wouldn't get the full force of her state in the length of a short story.

Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth (originally published 1934)

I have been a Joseph Roth fan since reading The Radetzky March several years ago. Obviously a novella cannot encompass the breadth and depth of such a complex novel, but this book is a multilayered look at the life and ultimate downfall of a man who leaves the army so he can marry, becomes an inspector of weights and measures in a remote region of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, and has to confront his feelings of loneliness, loss of purpose, and lust/love in an area that is home to smugglers and cheaters of all varieties. The natural world is vividly portrayed as well.

80 -
Sounds intriguing. You should add it to the Author Theme Reads group. ;) /end pimping of group

Read three -

Alice Fell - Emma Tennant
Tennant's rewriting of the Persephone myth doesn't quite hang together. The two strands of Tennant's writing, the experimental and the satiric, don't gel: the fractured, poetic prose style (the book is rendered in short paragraphs/chapters) doesn't allow Tennant the scope to explore contemporary society, and is over-burdened with symbolism. At times though, the prose does achieve a haunting beauty.

Rape - Joyce Carol Oates
Very disappointing. Oates tale of a gang rape is shocking but has two dimensional characters and is surprisingly cliche-laden.

Helena, or The Sea in Summer - Julian Ayesta
Beautiful impressionistic tale of young love - more a prose poem than a novel.

The Ayesta sounds lovely... (and, as you know, we have differing opinions on that particular Oates...)

Street of Lost Footsteps by Lyonel Trouillot (3 stars)

The action in this novella takes place during one unspeakable night of violence in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, as the Troops of the Prophet engage in a bloodbath with the forces of the dictator Deceased Forever-Immortal. The three main characters, an aging madam, a post office worker and a taxi driver, all unreliable narrators, relay their tales of the night's events in alternating chapters to an unknown interviewer. They also paint portraits of life in the poverty- and war-stricken country, where even young boys seethe with hatred toward their neighbors. Trouillot includes frequent references to past revolutionary events and violent episodes in the country's history, including the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent Haitians by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1937.

Unfortunately, I did not find this to be a particularly captivating or enlightening story. The taxi driver was the only character who was caught in the midst of the violence of that night, but even his account was not an engaging one. I did enjoy the only other book I've read by this author, Children of Heroes, but this one wasn't nearly as good.

Well, I did finally get around to re-reading (it's been more than thirty years) the "great American novella," The Great Gatsby.

Read JCO's Black Water a few days ago and forgot to post then.

Publisher's note in the book: "This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously."

Black Water is a fictional re-telling of the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969 which became a great national scandal. For those of you unfamiliar, there is a very detailed wikipedia article on the subject. Everything has been changed - the setting, the physical attributes of the Senator, the car used...etc. - but the story is there in its essence and told by a narrator from the viewpoint of Kelly Kelleher, the victim who drowned in the overturned car that the Senator was driving drunk. Once I got past the impulse to compare details with what I knew of the actual incident, I found the story haunting and often mesmerizing. The narrative alternates between back story and flashes - sometimes lyrical - of the actual crash and the last few hours of its victim. The was not exactly what I expected - an outright indictment of the Senator for all of his failures (although it is surely implied) - there are more fundamental truths, a much broader indictment, that Oates is getting to through this novella - and that, I think, is something left for you to discover on your own.

I count 49 novellas read by participants in March (yes, it's April!). There may be a few we haven't noted yet.

You got me going on this, Lois, and I may try to read a few more novellas in April. It's very satisfying to cross them off my "hope to read soon" list!

I've got 2 more I need to review.

>88 rebeccanyc: I've become rather fond of them myself.
>89 janemarieprice: yay!

Just a little behind, but I am reading Stefan Zweig's Journey Into the Past for one of my novellas for March. Quite good thus far. I am loving Zweig. Whoever chose the "Author of the Year Theme Reads" for 2010 deserves major kudos!~!
I also read his Moonbeam Alley, Elizabeth Bowen's World of Love, & Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
It's difficult for me to tell the difference between a novella & a short story. So if I goofed, please forgive.

Thanks belva -
I'm going to take that credit right away. It's been a huge pleasure introducing Zweig to so many and seeing how much he's been enjoyed by all.

But really, the credit should go to my grandmother who introduced me to Zweig about 10 years ago. Ever since he's been a very dear favorite of mine. I just fell in love with his writing.

It is no longer March, but I have just read Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig. This novella tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who goes to a spa with his mother sometime in the very early 1900s, is befriended by a mysterious baron who sees the boy as the way to get to know the mother, who he wants to seduce, and who then goes through a torrent of emotions as he begins to comprehend that he was used and that adults, including his mother, lie and have secrets, including one very big mystery. Zweig's writing takes us inside the minds of all three characters, and the psychological drama propels the novella along as the boy comes to recognize that he is leaving childhood behind. As a modern reader, I had to suspend disbelief that a 12-year-old could be as naive as this one was, but I am perfectly ready to believe that could be true of someone from his upper middle class background at that time.

Nice review rebecca and Zweig is the Annual Author Theme Read so we get to read him all year and no guilt trips; Okay? So enjoy to your heart's content!~!
I love him. He died way too early and wrote not nearly enough.
lilisiin; I also love that your grandmother loved you so much that she shared this wonderful author with you that you could share him with me. Thank you.
xoxo
belva

Three more that I have only just got around to reviewing, full reviews on my thread:

Ourika by Claire de Duras, (published in 1823) - Ourika is a Senegalese girl, rescued from slavery to be raised by a Parisian noblewoman, and coming to a sudden realization of her ‘otherness’.

The Lesson of the Master by Henry James - A young writer, Paul Overt, befriends St. George, a famous master whose later work, while popular, is less artistically strong.

On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger - A homogeneous mixture of parable, fantasy, social critique, and fable, Junger’s novella centers on two botanists living in an idyllic seaside community as a mysterious political group gains power.

It's no longer March, but I'm going to try to keep reading novellas, and here's my latest.

In Hotel Savoy, and early (1924) Joseph Roth novella, the narrator, who has been released from a Russian WWI POW camp, has found his way back to the very eastern edges of the former Austro-Hungarian empire and takes a room on the next-to-the-top floor of the Hotel Savoy (the higher the floor, the poorer the hotel guests). Over the course of his stay, he meets a huge variety of of strange, sometimes surreal characters, include the long-awaited Bloomfield, a local man who has achieved wealth in America and who, it is hoped, will solve everyone's problems. With unending streams of released prisoners, striking workers, would-be revolutionaries, debauched industrialists, an aging and mysterious lift-boy, and charlatans of all stripes, the Hotel Savoy and its fate are a prescient allegory of post-war Europe.