Forbidden Notebook – Alba de Céspedes (tr. Ann Goldstein)

Alba de Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook has been garnering rave reviews of late and after reading it, I can say that the hype is totally justified. The novel is translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein who was also the translator for Elena Ferrante’s wonderful Neapolitan Novels.

In the later pages of Forbidden Notebook, there’s a scene where Valeria Cossatti, our protagonist and the narrator is having lunch with her glamorous friend Clara at her place, a penthouse apartment in Rome. Divorced from her husband, Clara is now an independent woman and a successful filmmaker, but by then Valeria’s position has become much more complex. Her outward façade continues to be that of a traditional woman confined to the role of a homemaker and catering to the needs of her husband and two children, but inwardly Valeria has begun to seethe and resist these conventional norms she is expected to adhere to. Clara believes that Valeria has been lucky to achieve all that she wanted by marrying, but by then Valeria and the reader know the reality to be entirely different – Valeria has been experiencing a deep sense of disillusionment, a feeling she is unable to share with Clara.

It is this intense conflict, growing resistance, and the dual nature of her thoughts and emotions that forms the essence of Alba de Céspedes’s Forbidden Notebook – a rich, multilayered novel of domestic dissatisfaction and awakening seen through the prism of a woman’s private diary. Set in 1950s Rome, not only does the book boldly challenge the validity of restrictive, orthodox roles thrust upon women, and the heartaches of motherhood, but it also dwells on writing as a powerful tool for a woman to find her voice and be heard when those closest to her fail to do so.

The novel’s opening line “I was wrong to buy this notebook, very wrong” sets the tone of this feverish narrative where one Sunday on a whim Valeria purchases a notebook from a tobacconist’s shop. Thus, in one fell swoop, her action is forbidden on two counts – (a) purchasing notebooks from tobacconists was prohibited on Sundays by law, (b) the very act of diary-writing, hitherto unknown to her, must be shrouded in secrecy without her family ever finding out.

Beginning in November 1950, Valeria’s initial diary entries paint a picture of contented family life, but cracks soon begin to appear on the surface and the growing discontent bubbles forth. We learn that Valeria and her husband Michele are both in their forties with two grown-up children Riccardo and Mirella who are twenty and living with them.

Financially, the family isn’t too well-off. Michele works at a bank and out of necessity Valeria is a working woman too, although privately she enjoys and values her work life with all the sense of pride that comes with it. But it’s a household where Valeria does not have the agency to discuss how meaningful her work is to her, she immediately knows that no one will take her seriously. It is okay for her to publicly admit that she is working to supplement the family income, but she can’t say that her work adds meaning and purpose to her life. Michele does get a promotion and their finances thereafter improve but not significantly enough to improve their standard of living. The strained financial circumstances start impacting Riccardo and Mirella’s outlook too. Riccardo decides to find a job and relocate to Argentina, while Mirella having studied law, starts working in a law firm and begins going out with her colleague, a successful, sophisticated, and much older man who showers her with expensive gifts and instills in her a taste for fine living.

Meanwhile, Valeria is defined by the stereotyped roles of a wife and a mother which imply a life of uncomplaining selflessness and service to others. Dull, monotonous household chores and daily meals take up most of her time, and she struggles to find time for herself, some peace and quiet that she can devote to writing in her notebook. Valeria is aware that even boldly proclaiming her newfound activity will be looked upon incredulously by her family who take her for granted and can’t imagine her indulging in something that is only for herself.

In the beginning, Valeria is tormented by the presence of a secret diary and by its very nature keeping Michele in the dark, and yet she inwardly rebels at the idea of stopping it. She continues to write late into the night but is always fearful of the consequences if her diary is found. Even finding a hiding place for her diary is a challenge, there’s no place in the house that she can truly call her own.

As the novel progresses, we begin to glimpse faults within the family that only fuel Valeria’s growing unhappiness, and the later diary entries reflect her newfound awareness, frustrations with her husband and children, and the growing desire to walk away from it all. She desperately longs for someone to talk to, but having lived a life for so long where her opinions were always moulded by tradition and authority, she can’t quite bring herself to be frank and assertive. In that aspect, the notebook is her silent companion, its pages opening up to her so that she can express herself and her true feelings.

Her children’s behaviour disturbs her too, albeit in different ways. Riccardo grows up to be an unremarkable man with a rigid, limited way of thinking. He begins a relationship with an extremely quiet and docile woman Marina hoping to marry and settle down, a woman who fails to make an impression on Valeria and she wishes Riccardo had chosen a partner who was strong and not meek.  But in light of Riccardo’s growing misogynistic tendencies, his choice of a match is hardly a surprise to the reader – Marina is a woman he can boss and push around.

It is Mirella’s transformation into a fiercely independent woman that is one of the most interesting aspects of the book and the many intense, heated discussions that she has with Valeria regarding her choices are one of the novel’s many highlights.

“That is what disgusts me, mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.”

Essentially, Mirella becomes what Valeria would have wanted to become but could not. Mirella’s observations and arguments display a keen perception and maturity that unnerve Valeria. By taking up a job and becoming financially independent, by taking on a lover and rejecting the established ideal of marriage, she is an embodiment of a modern woman and a threat to Valeria’s outmoded ideas especially at a time when Valeria’s sense of self and the roles assigned to her begins to crumble and breakdown. During one of their many high-octane conversations, Mirella accuses Valeria of being jealous of the choices she has made, which shocks Valeria at the time, but within the private confines of her diary, she’s forced to admit however difficult, that Mirella may be right.

But at the end of the day, Forbidden Notebook is all about Valeria and her continuous struggle with her outward persona that is more and more at odds with her interior self. It is this duality of character, of trying to keep up with both personalities that cause her much anguish, a tussle incredulously unnoticed by those closest to her as they remain selfishly absorbed with their own problems. If she was perfectly happy being a conventional housewife, life would have gone on as before. If she was sure of her desire to upend her current life and start entirely afresh, she would have taken that step too just like her friend Clara did. But the root of Valeria’s problems is the difficulty in making that decision, of resolving that conflict. She’s caught between a rock and a hard place – her newly discovered self-awareness prevents her from going back to her old life, yet at the same time her hard-to-dismantle old-fashioned and patriarchal outlook prevents her from abandoning it.

Conditioned to adhere to conservative roles, Valeria instinctively chastises Mirella for having a lover and rejecting marriage and children, but at the same time finds herself attracted to her boss who is a married man, an affair she is not ready to terminate. She supports Ricardo’s decision to marry and yet disapproves of his choice of a wife; she wished he had not chosen someone weak like Marina, and yet it is obvious that a strong-willed woman would never have married Riccardo.

Mirella’s gutsy decision to live life on her own terms by rebuking conventionality and the blossoming of a romance with her boss Guido are the two chief catalysts that force Valeria to re-examine her life, particularly her marriage, in a new and altered light. Her relationship with Michele has slid into an all-too-comfortable space, the feeling that they live like siblings rather than as husband and wife. The romance and passion of those initial days of marriage have vanished; the ensuing war and birth of the children thereafter fail to revive that intimacy, although they remain fond of one another.

Maybe that’s what for so many years prevents us from being as we were when we were newly married, or when the children were little and didn’t understand anything: it’s the presence of the children on the other side of the wall. You have to wait until they’ve gone out, you have to be certain you won’t be surprised; and the children are everywhere, in a house. At night you have to resort to darkness, to silence, restrain every word, every moan, and in the morning not remember what happened out of fear that they might read the memory of it in your eyes.

Michele is also full of double standards – there’s a scene where he openly admires Clara for her independence, wealth and success, and yet expresses disapproval of Valeria walking down that same path borne out of the idea that it is okay for other women to lead unconventional lives while his wife must remain conventional.

Enmeshed into these narratives is also her complicated relationship with her mother, who isn’t entirely supportive of Valeria’s life and choices even if, ironically, Valeria has never rebelled the way Mirella has.

The past no longer served to protect us, and we had no certainty about the future. Everything in me is confused, and I can’t talk about it with my mother or my daughter because neither would understand. They belong to two different worlds: the one that ended with that time, the other that it gave birth to. And in me these two worlds clash, making me groan. Maybe that’s why I often feel. that I have no substance. Maybe I am only this passage, this clash.

As a result, Valeria’s sense of loneliness only accentuates even when she’s with the family, as she yearns to break the shackles that have bound her to them for so long. She longs for Venice as a gateway to paradise, first with Michele once the children have left home for good, but then later with Guido to escape the claustrophobic confines of home and the demands it makes of her. But will she go through with it is the million-dollar question.

If she had the courage and wasn’t so influenced by the norms of patriarchy, she could have walked away from her husband who viewed her as just another fixture in the house, and she could have left her children who were capable of fending for themselves, even if society would not have accepted the idea of a woman walking out on her husband and children. But for Valeria it’s not that simple because to undertake such a step would mean to admit that her past life accounted for nothing, and accepting that is much harder.

Thus, in Forbidden Notebook, we see a rich array of themes on display – marriage, family life, the sorrow of children flying the nest, the widening generational gap, the importance and value of wealth and money, the tussle between traditional values and modern ideas, but more importantly the sense of purpose in a woman’s life which is not necessarily defined by her husband and children, and her right to her own private space. Forbidden Notebook also explores the idea of writing as a refuge and private act of confession which in Valeria’s case is a double-edged sword – It gives her that alone time and means of expression not available otherwise, and yet it’s also an act that instills unbearable fear, she remains on tenterhooks afraid of its discovery and along with it the invasion of her private domain. Writing in her notebook allows Valeria to dig deeper into her life and yet her observations and analysis also frighten her, she almost wishes she could destroy her notebook so that life could turn back to what it was – simple compared to the complex emotions and feelings the notebook has stirred.

Because when I write in this notebook I feel I’m committing a serious sin, a sacrilege: it’s as if I were talking to the devil. Opening it, my hands tremble; I’m afraid. I see the white pages, the dense parallel lines ready to receive the chronicle of my future days, and even before I’ve lived them, I’m distressed. I know that my reactions to the facts I write down in detail lead me to know myself more intimately every day. Maybe there are people who, knowing themselves, are able to improve; but the better I know myself, the more lost I become. Besides, I don’t know what feelings could stand up to a ruthless, continuous analysis; or who among us, reflected in every action, could be satisfied with ourself. It seems to me that in life you have to choose a line of conduct, confirm it with yourself and others, and then forget those gestures, those actions, that contradict it. You have to forget them. My mother always says that people with short memories are lucky.

Billed as a feminist classic, Forbidden Notebook, then, is a masterclass of insight and imagination, brilliant in the way it provides a window into a woman’s interior life, an internal struggle that oscillates between the desire to find her own voice and also keep it hidden. Highly recommended!

Advertisement

Cold Nights of Childhood – Tezer Özlü (tr. Maureen Freely)

On our recent travels to the Czech Republic, we had a long layover in the Turkish city of Istanbul. But not so long that we could go outside and explore the city although I would have definitely loved to. Some day in the future perhaps, but in the meanwhile I was happy to immerse myself in some Turkish literature instead with Tezer Özlü’s Cold Nights of Childhood.

In the early pages of Cold Nights of Childhood, our unnamed narrator is toying with the idea of suicide (“Thoughts of death chase after me. Day and night, I think about killing myself”). She is unclear why, but to the reader, her reasons are not entirely obscure. She longs to escape the stifling environment of her home, a conservative society ruled by patriarchal norms. Her father is driven by nationalistic and monetary fervor constantly espousing success and the call of duty to the nation. Her brother enjoys freedom in the house in a way she does not, and he uses that power to his advantage. These thoughts of ending her life suddenly transform into action, and our narrator consumes a bunch of pills wishing for death but wakes up in a psychiatric unit instead. She’s very young then and admits to this incident being her last suicide attempt, and yet it marks the beginning of a series of fear-inducing stints at psychiatric wards in the subsequent years.

Cold Nights of Childhood, then, is an unflinching portrayal of a woman’s quest for independence, freedom, sex and love, as well as her struggles with mental illness told in a writing style that is cinematic and impressionistic without conforming to the rigid structures of conventional storytelling. Originally published in 1980, the novella is filled with autobiographical elements as indicated in the introduction by Ayşegül Savaş and the translator’s note by Maureen Freely.

At barely 70 pages and set between 1950 and 1970, the novella is divided into four chapters and begins with a flavour of our narrator’s childhood and school years in the Turkish town of Fatih. We get an idea of her conservative upbringing, the lack of love between her parents (“what binds them together are their weighty petit bourgeois responsibilities”), soul-crushing daily family routines, and her deep yearning to break free, to travel to big cities and faraway lands. Evenings are spent with a friend reading Russian classics (“how very much these novels resonate with our own world”), while schooling years are spent in a lycee run by nuns whose mysterious workings are beyond our narrator’s grasp.

Later, the novella begins focusing on our narrator’s years in Istanbul and Ankara, and abroad in Europe’s great capital cities (Berlin and Paris). We learn of her string of lovers, her unsuccessful marriages, and above all her incarceration in mental asylums. This predominantly forms the essence of the book, and yet the narrative is not as linear as it seems.

Timelines blur as do places that often merge into one another like colours in a watercolour painting. For instance, in the third chapter titled “The Leo Ferre Concert”, in one moment our narrator is residing in an artist’s residence in Berlin, a house with high ceilings, wide wooden stairs, huge rooms filled with paintings, rich furniture and thousands of books, and in the next moment we find her in a grim hospital room minimally furnished with a dismal wardrobe, iron bedstead and a night table. The time shifts also come without warning. For instance, in the first chapter where our narrator dwells on her childhood, we learn of her grandmother Bunni, ancient in every sense, both in terms of thoughts and deeds, and her untiring attempts at running the daily household, and then we come across a sentence that describes Bunni’s funeral attended by our narrator with her young child.

Cold Nights of Childhood is also remarkable for its frank depiction of sex, not in terms of describing the act itself but the joyful experience of it. Flitting between a stream of lovers, our narrator is uninhibited when talking about the pleasures of sex, and freely expresses the wild desire that gnaws at her. We also get a glimpse of her freethinking personality when she muses on the nature of relationships.

Why can’t we find our way out of all this? Why do we rush into marriage and relationships, without first becoming friends? Is this what people in their early twenties should be doing? Do we have to sign the marriage register in order to have sex? Or live alone, longing for sex and masturbating? Do men have to find sexual excitement not in actual women but in their images? Must the first woman they know carnally be in a brothel? Must husbands and wives regard each other’s bodies as property? It contradicts our physical make-up entirely, all this. From earliest childhood, they stop us from being ourselves, from loving others, from caressing them. They twist us. Rob us.

Some of those fleeting relationships culminate in marriage, but married life proves unsatisfying. In fact, the reason she marries one of her husbands is because of his promise to not subject her again to the frightening yet eerily familiar experience of psychiatric wards, the loss of freedom and sense of self that it entails. All she asks of him if she falls ill is “to stay at home with my books and my records and a few of my favourite things, drinking tea.” The husband, unsurprisingly, breaks that promise.

Interspersed throughout the text are our narrator’s struggles with mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder (“The illness that begins with such joy soon falls into a dark abyss”), and the dehumanising effects of electroshock treatments. She internally resists but is also outwardly aware of the futility of doing so. The isolation of being shut up in a space of utter silence with occasional voices floating in, when just a few steps away from the hospital, the noisy, outside world carries on unabashedly is wonderfully conveyed. This resistance to a kind of torturous imprisonment is also a cry for life, to witness its joys, to fight for individuality, freedom, and the wonder of brand new experiences.

In addition to the main themes above, the novella is also about the clash between conservative ideals and a more progressive, liberal way of thinking as seen in the striking contrast between our narrator’s childhood and life in her twenties. Turkey’s political turmoil and its impact, while not the central focus of the novella, nevertheless remains on the fringes, filtering into the lives of our narrator’s friends and family.

Cold Nights of Childhood reverberates with striking sensory images, atmospheric descriptive passages that evoke the finer things in life as well as a sense of sadness and melancholia – rooms full of books, cafes spilling onto pavements, the languid summers and the blue-green Mediterranean, the streets of Paris gleaming wet with rain, penthouse apartments with paintings on the walls, melancholic Bach violin concertos.

In these great European cities, friends don’t drop by unexpected. When their day’s work is done, when they’ve left their cafes and restaurants, they have the habit of immersing themselves in deep solitude.

A lot of the descriptions also focus on interior spaces, particularly pieces of furniture that define and distinguish one setting from another. There’s a vivid sense of place specifically when it comes to Turkey – the green waters of the Bosphorus, a Turkish village where the sand is golden with sunlight, Istanbul’s bohemian enclaves, yalis (water mansions) lining the shore, lively meyhanes (taverns) where students gather to discuss art and politics.

Our narrator’s wasted years in psychiatric wards pretty much mirror the five years that Tezer Özlü spent in a psychiatric hospital for bipolar disorder. While helpless in an environment that greatly restricted her freedom, at least when it came to writing Cold Nights of Childhood, Özlü fiercely resisted being tied down by the norms of established narratives. This is why when I began reading the book, I found the first couple of pages a tad disorienting but then I nicely settled into its rhythm. Written in a spare, lucid style, the novella is an amalgam of thoughts and impressions where boundaries with regard to timelines and settings do not exist and where occasional instances of dreams blending with reality reflecting our narrator’s drug-induced stupor crop up.

Moody, evocative, teeming with rich visuals and a palpable Jean Rhys vibe, Cold Nights of Childhood is a beautifully penned novella that I’m glad to have discovered. Very much recommended!

Salka Valka – Haldór Laxness (tr. Philip Roughton)

It was the Mookse and Gripes podcast in December 2022 that finally gave me the impetus to pick up Salka Valka; it was featured in Trevor’s Top Five of the year. It’s the first Haldór Laxness novel I’ve read and based on how wonderful it was, won’t be my last. This is also my contribution to #NordicFINDS23 hosted by AnnaBookBel.

THAT HAUNTING OPENING SCENE…

In the opening pages of Salka Valka, a coastal steamer stops at the port of a small, remote fishing village called Oseyri. Surrounded by looming mountains and fjords, the village is now in the throes of deepening winter, relentlessly hounded by driving snow. Oseyri is such a nondescript, isolated village (“you get the impression that nothing in the world could be more insignificant and meaningless than such a small village under such high mountains”), that a couple of idle tourists aboard the steamer at the time of its docking, can’t help wondering about it – “How do people live in such a place? And how do they die?”

Nobody can envisage a life here, but on that cold, bleak winter’s night two figures emerge from the steamer – a woman called Sigurlina and her 11-year old daughter Salvor (Salka Valka). Sigurlina and Salka Valka have made this journey from the North, certain circumstances having driven them away, and while Reykjavik seems to be their final destination, Sigurlina, reduced to a state of penury, cannot afford the cost of the trip further.

Oseyri, then, becomes her destination for the time being, she hopes to find a job that will help her make enough money to embark on the journey south. However, fate as we shall see has other plans…

Thus begins this wondrous, 552-paged, ambitious novel of Salka Valka, an immersive, brilliant, often harrowing tale of a beleaguered fishing community and the indomitable spirit of a woman who prides on her independence and strives to improve their lot.

ESSENCE OF PLOT & STRUCTURE

Salka Valka is divided into four sections, each section comprising two parts. In the first section, we meet Salka when she is an 11-year old girl, defiant and spirited even at that young age. She accompanies Sigurlina when she knocks at several doors, desperate to find work and in this way, along with her the reader is also introduced to some of the prominent inhabitants of the village. The foremost is Jóhann Bogesen, a wealthy merchant who has a monopoly on the village’s fishing operations (the community’s primary source of livelihood), while also managing the store; the villagers’ employment status is defined by the opening of an account with Bogesen. Sigurlina fails to find employment there as a maid and her subsequent visits to the church Dean and the village doctor also yield no results. Mostly viewed as strangers, the dean and the doctor remain suspicious of her background, it is alleged that Salka is an illegitimate child (which is true), and consequently turn both mother and daughter away.

Little wonder then that Sigurlina finds some solace in the Salvation Army, its religious teachings and chanting re-ignite her faith in Christianity. The village church looks down upon the Salvation Army branding it a heathen place, but it is perhaps a tad ironic that while both espouse the tenets of Christianity, it is the Salvation Army that welcomes Sigurlina in a way that the formal church does not.

Meanwhile, Salka Valka’s fiery persona is evident right from the very beginning as she hurls insults at Argantyr, Bogesen’s son, while at their palatial home (when Sigurlina is looking for work). In a village whose personality is largely shaped by fish and fishing, it is Salka who boldly approaches Jóhann Bogesen for the purpose of opening an account with him and demands to be given a job washing fish. Concerned that she is too young, the villagers are, nevertheless, struck by her will of steel, and she soon begins working with them because all said and done extra hands are needed for the job.

It’s also in the first section that we encounter two men who will have an important bearing on how the story unfolds and will play a pivotal role in how Salka’s destiny shapes up. First is the creepy sailor Steinþor, a raging alcoholic prone to destructive fits of anger. Steinþor helps Sigurlina find lodgings when no one else does and immediately begins an affair with her much to Salka’s chagrin. Salka also meets Arnaldur, a dreamy man, hired as her tutor for a brief period. Arnaldur lives with his irascible grandfather and an upright aunt; his mother has abandoned the family and his father is now a cultivated man settled abroad. Arnaldur is tormented by dreams of his mother which he confides to Salka, and regales her with visions of alternate worlds more captivating to him than his current circumstances.  

Part Two forwards to several years later, and Salka is now a young woman, self-reliant, living in her own house with a share in a fishing boat. She is also instrumental in forming a fisherman’s union successful in negotiating a wage hike. Despite her loathing for Steinþor Steinsson, Salka is not averse to the lure of money and there are rumors that payments received from America (notably from Steinþor) have helped fund the purchase of her home. In that sense, she is reasonably well-off in a village, where most others still struggle financially in their daily lives.

Politics, revolutionary ideals, and socio-economic issues make up for a bulk of the second section as the largely ignorant working class of Oseyri begins to get a whiff of the scent of Bolshevism, while the capitalists in the village resist its growing influence.

RICHLY DRAWN, COMPLEX CENTRAL CHARACTERS

Salka Valka, the titular character, is a remarkable heroine and a force to reckon with in Oseyri. Bold and enterprising, she is fiercely independent right from an early age, and a source of financial support to her mother who gradually sinks into despondency as her relationships fail. During her teenage years, Salka is treated like an outsider in Oseyri, often left out, and constantly humiliated by the jeers and insults of peers but she soldiers on. She is ugly when measured against the standards of conventional beauty, tall and strong, awkward even and often naïve when it comes to relationships, but sharp and intelligent in matters relating to business and money. Salka has a fraught, complex relationship with Steinþor, a man she abhors who nearly rapes her in the first section, yet she has no qualms about accepting money from him, because she understands the value of currency.

Then there’s Sigurlina who cuts a sorrowful figure, succumbing to men especially in her yearnings for love and support, and Steinþor who has a towering, disturbing presence in the lives of both women, Sigurlina wishes to marry him despite their abusive relationship. Increasingly moody and violent particularly when sozzled with drink, Steinþor desires Salka, and often disappears for long periods on sea when things get too hot for him in the village. Steinpor has grand ambitions of uprooting Bogesen’s unshakeable position but no one takes him seriously when he is so regularly drunk.

Arnaldur Björnsson casts a spell over Salka with his “face shining out of the darkness of the night, radiant with belief in another world.” Hired as Salka’s tutor, the two share a close bond which waxes and wanes over the course of the novel. Educated and immersed in books, a passionate revolutionary and an effective orator, Arnaldur’s communistic fervor awakens the interest of the Oseyri workers to the tenets of communism, but while his intensity as a rabble rouser is electrifying, he does not seem to be cut out for the execution of his ideology or the grunt work that it involves. Salka often wonders whether Arnaldur’s interest in communism is fuelled by his need to always argue and fight his enemies, only to lose interest once there’s nothing left to fight for.  

And last but not the least is Jóhann Bogesen, the wealthy merchant, who runs the show, and pretty much controls the economic pulse of the village. The Oseyri residents need him for their survival and at the same time despise him because they are at his mercy.

PANOPLY OF THEMES

One of the core themes that the novel addresses is the ugly side of abject poverty and the struggles of the working class. This is represented by the pathetic living conditions of Oseyri’s inhabitants – steeped in debt and dirt, riddled with illness and death, often at the mercy of natural calamities and the indifference of humanity. This is a deeply religious community, but the burden and worries of day to day living, not surprisingly, also fuel a wavering of faith and a hopeless resignation towards their doomed fate which God and the church does nothing to alleviate.  

Part Two of the novel assumes political overtones; the plight of the working class becomes the foundation for politics bringing in its wake sharp contrast in viewpoints. At the time when the novel is set, Iceland was part of the Kingdom of Denmark, while at the same time Russia was riding on the wave of communism and Bolshevism, the winds of this ideology blowing across the rest of Europe as well. In Salka Valka, these varying ideologies are epitomized by its central characters – Bogesen is the capitalist and a proponent of individual initiative, Arnaldur is the passionate Bolshevist and a budding revolutionary, while there are others who believe in self-determination and express a wish to break away from Denmark as well.

This novel was originally published in the early 1930s but Laxness’ stellar rendering of the intricate working of Iceland’s economy and the various cogs in the wheel (Oseyri being the hub) that support it has striking parallels with the financial crisis that crippled the nation in 2008. The rippling effects of union strikes, the ceasing of production, bad debts piling up with banks highlights a capitalist system where the fortunes of the wealthy are dented but pale in comparison to the plight of the poor, who caught between a rock and hard place, suffer the hardest.

Through debates and arguments between the principal characters, Laxness brings to the fore the complexity of myriad philosophies at play, always highlighting both sides of the coin – Bolshevism Vs Capitalism, independent initiative Vs mass production and community living, and so on.

Salka Valka is also in many ways a feminist tale. Salka’s zeal to lead her life on her own terms is strong not only because of her inherent personality but also because deep down she abhors her mother’s dependence on men to survive. That women have to bear the brunt of misogyny and grapple with shame and ostracization from the misdeeds of men is also explored.   

The novel also lays bare the widening gulf between the rich and poor in terms of money and opportunities. The Bogesens live in lavish comfort in Oseyri, and the merchant’s children enjoy the privilege of education in Copenhagen giving them an air of elegance and sophistication if not empathy, while Salka and her lot remains ignorant of the world outside, inhabiting a narrow space where nothing much happens and the only preoccupations centre around daily fishing activities.

STARK WEATHER – A FORCE IN ITS OWN RIGHT

In a novel replete with fully realised characters, Salka Valka also pulsates with a vivid sense of place – the mountains and fjords among which Oseyri is nestled, lends it a remote, distant quality; a place whose fate is determined by the vagaries of nature, the relentless brunt of thunderstorms and stark, severe winters.

AN EPIC NOVEL, EXPANSIVE IN SCOPE

Salka Valka, then, is a big, beautiful novel, expansive in its scope and incredibly absorbing. The first section is particularly haunting when depicting the plight of Oseyri’s villagers and workers crushed by poverty and barely making ends meet. The unraveling of Sigurlina’s fate is also imminently sad as she is engulfed by hopelessness and unbearable disappointment from the men she falls in love with.

Salka’s forceful spirit combined with her awkwardness and heightened sense of isolation during her early years in Oseyri are also strikingly depicted, as are the gamut of emotions she experiences with Arnaldur that oscillate between friendship and kinship to scorn and jealousy. Not to mention the increasing hatred she feels for Steinþor who lusts for her and bewilders her with his poetic fervor.

Part One is intense in the way the dynamics between the central characters play out and is in that sense more personal, while in Part Two that intensity takes a different path as the focus becomes more political.

This is entirely a third person narrative and one can’t help get a feeling that Laxness is an omniscient narrator particularly when he makes certain observations about his characters, his views subtly disguised in wit and comedy.

IN A NUTSHELL…

Epic in scope and ahead of its times, Salka Valka, then, is a simmering cauldron of various delectable ingredients – a coming-of-age tale, a statement on world politics, a strange beguiling love story, and an unforgettable female lead. Highly recommended!

The Hearing Trumpet – Leonora Carrington

Originally published in 1974 and reissued by NYRB Classics in 2020, Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet had been languishing on my shelf for more than a year (I could say that for most of the books that keep streaming into the house endlessly) and it was Kim McNeill on Twitter and her excellent #NYRBWomen23 reading challenge (there are many gems on that list) that finally prompted me to pick it up.

If you thought a story centred on a 92-year old protagonist was bound to be dull and depressing, think again. Leonora’s Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet is a delicious romp, a stunning feat of the imagination and an iconoclastic book if you will that refuses to be pigeonholed into convenient definitions and genres; and in Marian Leatherby, the nonagenarian in this superbly off-kilter tale, Carrington has created an unconventional heroine who is charming, feisty and memorable.

The book begins in a quiet, residential neighbourhood on the outskirts of an unnamed Mexican city where Marian Leatherby, our narrator, resides with her son Galahad, his wife Muriel and their 25-year old unmarried son Robert. It soon becomes clear that Marian is not welcome in that house; the family considers her an embarrassment. Marian has been allotted a room that opens into a little garden and she pretty much keeps to herself for larger parts of the day hardly venturing into the main house. She seems content in her own little world with a couple of cats, a red hen and her fanciful daydreaming to occupy her time. She also enjoys the company of her spirited and loquacious friend Carmella with her penchant for conjuring up unrealistic and improbable schemes and ideas.

“Men are very difficult to understand,” said Carmella. “Let’s hope they all freeze to death.”

One day, Carmella in a considerable state of excitement gifts Marian a hearing trumpet she purchased in a market.

When Carmella gave me the present of a hearing trumpet she may have foreseen some of the consequences. Carmella is not what I would call malicious, she just happens to have a curious sense of humour. 

It’s a thing of beauty (“encrusted with silver and mother o’pearl motives and grandly curved like a buffalo’s horn”), and with its aid Marian’s hearing is now amplified to such a degree that she can hear conversations hitherto inaccessible to those with normal hearing. Until one day, she inadvertently chances upon a conversation between Galahad, Muriel and Robert plotting to dislodge her from their house and park her in an old age home much against her true wishes.

Marian internally seethes but realises that resistance is futile and resigns to her fate. When the family finally arrives at the old age home, Marian is completely taken by surprise; the institution (the building itself and the area around) run by the overly pious Gambit couple gives the impression of an enchanting medieval castle quite unlike the bleak, cheerless structure she had envisaged.

First impressions are never very clear, I can only say there seemed to be several courtyards, cloisters, stagnant fountains, trees, shrubs, lawns. The main building was in fact a castle, surrounded by various pavilions with incongruous shapes. Pixielike dwellings shaped like toadstools, Swiss chalets, railway carriages, one or two ordinary bungalows, something shaped like a boot, another like what I took to be an outsize Egyptian mummy. It was all so very strange that I for once doubted the accuracy of my observation. 

Marian soon begins to settle in, gets introduced to her fellow residents, finds herself entangled in various adventures and is caught up in the fascinating life of an abbess. Indeed, in the middle of the book, the story goes back several centuries in time to a convent where this Abbess takes centrestage, an iron-willed woman with her proclivity for unimaginable luxuries and riches, an unconventional way of life and her daring quest to restore the Holy Grail back to the Goddess of Venus. Also enmeshed in the story are Marian’s reminisces, her carefree childhood spent in the company of her mother “who had lived a constant round of dizzy pleasure” that involved trips to Paris, Biarritz, Monte Carlo, Sicily and so on.

Murder and mystery, cross-dressing, hunger strikes, rebellion, midnight dancing and revelries, poetic riddles and the spectre of a looming frozen apocalypse are only a few of the smorgasbord of ingredients that spice up everyday life at the old age home.

How will this all end? In a deliciously unexpected way in what is a highly original story in the first place, reveling in taking the reader down surprising paths right from the very beginning.

There are so many facets to The Hearing Trumpet that makes it such a captivating read, the first and foremost being the characters. Marian Leatherby is a terrific creation; she may be hard of hearing but has lost none of her zest for life.

Here I must say that all my senses are by no means impaired by age. My sight is still excellent although I use spectacles for reading, when I read, which I practically never do. True, rheumatics have bent my skeleton somewhat. This does not prevent me taking a walk in clement weather and sweeping my room once a week, on Thursday, a form of exercise which is both useful and edifying. Here I may add that I consider that I am still a useful member of society and I believe still capable of being pleasant and amusing when the occasion seems fit.

She is, of course, distressed at the prospect of spending the rest of her days in an old age home, uprooted from the life she had grown used to, separated from her pets and her friend Carmella, but she takes it in her stride, and keeps her mind open to new experiences at the institution, even to new adventures of which there are plenty. Then there’s Georgina Sykes, an elegantly dressed woman (at least to Marian), irreverent and opinionated who has caught Mr Gambit’s fancy much to the chagrin of Mrs Gambit and is often involved in a hilarious slinging match with the grating, phony and self-righteous Natacha Gonzalez.

“Georgina Sykes is an obscene old woman,” said Natacha with unction. “She is a sex maniac and ought not to be allowed to mix with the other members of the community. She warps their minds.”

“I shall have to talk to her at once,” said Gambit in extreme agitation. “This might ruin the reputation of the whole Institution!”

“That is not all,” added Natacha. “She insulted me outrageously. Naturally I hurried to her bungalow to transmit the Message, with all the purity of mind I have cultivated for my Mission. Georgina,’ I said gently, ‘I have a message for you.’ She replied very rudely, saying: ‘If it’s a message from Heaven stuff it up your something or other.’ 

Mrs Gambit leads a self-improvement cult at the institution, bizarre as hell, with its emphasis on dodgy principles of Christianity and goodness. Other characters include the meek Maude Wilkins who unwittingly finds herself at the centre of a sinister plot, the imposing Vera Van Tocht, the overburdened Anna Wertz with her propensity to chatter away, the painter Veronica Adams who practices her art on reams of toilet paper and the Marquise with her tales of war and the battlefield. Last but not the least is the fiery Abbess whose tale wonderfully leaps off the pages for both Marian and the reader.

Yet despite its leanings towards fantasy, humour and banter, there are a variety of timeless themes that form the nucleus of the book. Growing old is, of course, one of them, and the way Marian is considered a burden to her son and daughter-in-law reflected in the cold manner in which she is treated is a grim reminder of the heartaches of old age. The Abbess is a symbol of feminism – her leadership skills and daring exploits, however dubious, is a breath of fresh air in a world and time largely dominated by men. The book also explores politics – the powerplay, hierarchy, scheming and favouritism rampant in the old age home is akin to the deceptively simple environment children experience in school (they say old age is like second childhood, don’t say?) and palpable even in the complex world of adults.

The Hearing Trumpet could be considered an extension of Carrington’s identity as Surrealist artist; the novel is a unique montage of styles and genres that resist the laws of conventional narration to brilliant effect. Indeed, Carrington’s creative vision is laced with its own interior logic – daydreams blend with reality in a sort of homage to Surrealism; historical fiction, comedy, fantasy and an embedded narrative (the literary equivalent of a Russian doll) effortlessly co-exist within the seemingly limitless boundaries of the author’s vivid imagination. A hearing trumpet, a painting of a derisive winking nun, a magic elixir that facilitates levitation to name a few are the hallmarks of Carrington’s delightful flights of fancy; much of the humour comes from Marian’s keen observations on her surroundings and its people as well as the interaction between the oddball residents of the institution; we have a book within a book that transports the reader to the 17^th century replete with a maverick, cross-dressing Abbess, plots and intrigues that involve the cultish Knights Templar, Goddess Venus and the Holy Grail.

But that’s not all! The icing on the cake and a lovely surprise are the illustrations peppered throughout the book (her son Pablo Weisz Carrington is the artist) – quirky and playful that perfectly capture the mood and eccentricity of this heady, surreal concoction.

The Hearing Trumpet, then, is a triumph; a novel that radiates charm, joie de vivre and a forceful personality of its own that makes it utterly singular. Highly recommended!

Source: NYRB

Mrs Caliban – Rachel Ingalls

Mrs Caliban was one of the books I had carried with me to a much needed holiday in Goa; the beach, the waves and the leisurely pace of the hours stretching before me only enhanced the joy of reading this terrific book.

About twenty pages into Mrs Caliban, Dorothy Caliban is busy in the kitchen making preparations for dinner. Fred, her husband, has invited a colleague over and the two are in the living room discussing work. This dinner having been sprung on her last minute, Dorothy makes it clear that the party will have to make do with spaghetti and salad and Fred relents. It’s a very ordinary scene – a housewife bustling about in the kitchen, cooking and assembling dishes, but suddenly this very ordinary moment is transformed into something extraordinary. Dorothy whirls around and sees an amphibian creature, a frogman, barging into the kitchen.

She was halfway across the checked linoleum floor of her nice safe kitchen when the screen door opened and a gigantic six-foot-seven-inch frog-like creature shouldered its way into the house and stood stock-still in front of her, crouching slightly, and staring straight at her face.

This is the very same frogman who has escaped from the research institute he was imprisoned in with repeated warnings given over the radio on how violent he is since he had killed two scientists while breaking free. After the initial flash of shock and fright, Dorothy regains her composure and offers the frogman some celery since he is ravenous and later installs him in a room downstairs, a place that Fred barely visits, and thus a secret Dorothy can keep till she figures out what to do next.

On the strength of such a wonderfully novel idea, Mrs Caliban, then, is a tale of the disintegration of a marriage, love and sexual freedom, grief and loss, friendship and betrayal, and the re-invention of a woman having hit rock bottom.

Our protagonist is Dorothy, a housewife residing in the suburbs of California stuck in a stagnant, loveless marriage. With the unexpected death of their son, Scotty, during a routine operation as well as a miscarriage thereafter, Dorothy is tormented by grief and despair. Her relationship with Fred has reached breaking point. Resentment brews between the two as they silently blame each other for these twin tragedies. The sense of hopelessness has reached a stage where both are too tired to even divorce. And so they stumble along…staring into an uncertain future.

During those days there were times when Dorothy would lean her head against the wall and seem to herself to be no longer living because she was no longer a part of any world in which love was possible.

Dorothy’s days are filled with household chores, frequent shopping trips, cooking meals; tasks that lack variety and signify mind-numbing tedium. The demarcation between days seems blurred pushing her into a state of apathy. A part of her is even aware that Fred is sleeping with other women, but she is now indifferent. She does derive some joy from her friendship with Estelle, a divorced woman with two grown-up children, and the two women often spending time together chatting about themselves and their lives, discussing their problems and providing each other emotional support.

Whenever she was with Estelle, Dorothy became louder, more childish and happier than when she was with anyone else.

But when one day, Larry, the frogman, lands in Dorothy’s kitchen, her life alters unexpectedly and in ways she has not imagined.

Dorothy is aware of Larry’s history from bits she has gleaned from the radio news. Having been captured from the Gulf of Mexico, Larry had been installed at the Jefferson Institute of Oceanographic Research as a specimen for scientific analysis and study. Rebelling against the continuous ill-treatment meted out to him, Larry manages to escape but not before he kills two scientists on his path to freedom.  The institute brands the incident as murder, for Larry it’s an act of self-preservation.

The reader immediately senses the perceptible shift in Dorothy’s circumstances;  a chance for excitement, love and adventure…a development that pushes her head above water, breathing new life into her, just when she was slowly and steadily sinking.  As Larry and Dorothy embark on a passionate affair, her world begins to light up, the days are suffused with colour and there’s a sharp clarity to the way she views the people and situations around her.

There, up in the sky, she noticed for the first time a gigantic mounded cloud, as large and elaborately moulded as a baroque opera house and lit from below and at the sides by pink and creamy hues. It sailed beyond her, improbable and romantic, following in the blue sky the course she was taking down below. It seemed to her that it must be a good omen.

What makes Mrs Caliban unique is not just its unusual premise but also how rich the novel is in terms of themes explored. We learn about the gradual disintegration of Fred and Dorothy’s marriage, and decline in Dorothy’s mental health exacerbated by the death of her son and the miscarriage. It’s a loss she is left to grieve alone; their marriage left in tatters leaves no room for the couple to help each other through this difficult time.

Another theme touched upon is the beauty of new ways of seeing and perceiving things. Being an aquatic creature, his new surroundings are a novelty to Larry. But as Dorothy begins to view the world through Larry’s eyes fuelled by his questions on basic human behaviour and traits, she is forced to think a lot and even question many of the things that she otherwise took for granted or about which she didn’t much care previously.

The novel is also radical in the way it questions gender roles. The Calibans find themselves ensconced in traditional gender stereotypes – Fred earns the income, while Dorothy’s role is reduced to that of a housewife following the same unvarying routine day in and day out. But that changes with the arrival of Larry. With no qualms or knowledge about the pigeonholing of roles, Larry is more than willing to chip in and learn to perform a slew of chores, easing some of the burden off Dorothy. Mrs Caliban is an exploration of love and sexual freedom; Dorothy’s affair with Larry is a revelation to her, and makes her feel alive after years of being trapped in an airless marriage. At a time, when women were expected to put up with their husbands having affairs, Dorothy refuses to follow what’s expected of her by society, choosing instead to seek some modicum of happiness in the manner she deems fit.

Furthermore, the novel is a statement on how society perceives outsiders with contempt and suspicion rather than compassion, inclusiveness and understanding. We are shown how narrowly defined and restrictive the definition of “normal” is, how anything outside that constricted space is immediately looked upon with venom, violence and hate. Being an amphibian man, Larry is branded  an outcast by the scientific community as well as the general population, a creature to be captured and tortured, rather than accepting him for who he is and treating him with more respect. Thus, despite being a tender, caring man, often Larry finds himself pushed into the corner by aggressive behaviour of the people around him and compelled to use violence as the only form of self-defense.

Above all else though, Mrs Caliban is a tale of the re-invention of a woman, her journey from a state of abject depression to that of rejuvenation and self-discovery – an evergreen theme which also forms the essence of another novel I read and loved recently – Tessa Hadley’s wonderful novel Free Love.

Within the broader strange outline of its plot, the novel has an interior logic all its own. In fact, Mrs Caliban is a testament to Ingalls’ excellent storytelling ability that she is able to blend the fantastical with the mundane to greater effect and on the strength of her assured writing the reader is willing to be led along in whichever direction she takes us. The foreword by Irenosen Okojie in my edition highlights how the book has influenced several people in the fields of art and culture – Guillermo del Toro’s award-winning The Shape of Water, particularly, is a prime example. In a nutshell, Mrs Caliban is an excellent novella, a magical, subversive fairytale and its themes of gender stereotypes and the isolation of people who don’t fit in remain relevant even today.