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!

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Boulder – Eva Baltasar (tr. Julia Sanches)

Translated from Catalan, Eva Baltasar’s Boulder is the first title I’ve read from the International Booker shortlist, an experience that I greatly enjoyed. It is part of a triptych of which the first book Permafrost (I’ve yet to read this) was already released earlier although from what I understand these books are linked in the sense that they are stylistically similar, although each book stands on its own.

As hot as molten lava erupting from a volcano, Boulder is a tightly compressed, intense novella of love, sex, motherhood and freedom; a book that derives its strength from the originality of its prose and the unconventionality of its protagonist.

Boulder begins with a visually powerful sense of place. We are transported to the Chiloe Islands (a part of Chile), and our narrator is a woman waiting at the quay to board a merchant ship scheduled to cruise along the coast of Chile and beyond.

Hailing from Barcelona, our narrator has travelled a long distance to the other side of the world to accept the position of a cook on a merchant ship (“I love this place, these narrow black eyes that neither desire me nor reject me, this fabulous freedom”). Besieged by growing restlessness, there’s a sense that our narrator is solitary, unmoored, and yet content with her current state, unencumbered by any form of serious attachment.

I let myself be strung along; life develops without overwhelming me, it squeezes into every minute, it implodes; I hold it in my hands. I can give anything up, because nothing is essential when you refuse to imprison life in a narrative.

But all that changes, when during one of the ship’s regular stops at Chaitén, she meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist, at an inn fuelling a desire that is sharp and intense (“I look at her and feel woozy, even though she’s Scandinavian and makes her living from a multinational with blood on its hands”). Samsa gives the nickname of Boulder to our narrator (“She says I’m like those large, solitary rocks in southern Patagonia, pieces of world left over after creation, isolated and exposed to every element”) and a serious relationship ensues although the two women could not have been more different. Samsa is social, successful, earning well, and even the one making major decisions, while Boulder for whom her passion is the driving force, seems okay to just tag along.

Gradually, Samsa introduces some semblance of a structure to their relationship, developments that Boulder internally resists but does not vehemently oppose for fear of losing Samsa. The first such change involves relocating to Iceland, settling in an apartment, and earning a living. Leaving behind a couple of low-paying, back-aching jobs that have nothing to do with cooking, Boulder opens her food truck selling coffee and empanadas; an enterprise that also becomes a refuge when it all becomes too much for her.

Previously untethered and at the same time malleable, always going with the flow and where her whims take her, for Boulder it’s a new experience to realise that Samsa is now her anchor, a bulwark around which her life revolves. It’s why she acquiesces to Samsa’s decision to settle in Iceland although Boulder is not particularly enamoured by this country (“The sea around Iceland is a dreadful thing…Misty and cold, always the same shade of smoky blue”) or its people (“I don’t like them, Icelanders. They feel so insular, tribal”).  

But ultimately, it’s Samsa’s wish to have a child that knocks Boulder off-kilter. Samsa is determined to be a mother; she’s past forty and doesn’t want to miss the chance of motherhood. Boulder could not have been more uninterested but is unable to find the courage to express her true feelings.

It seems unbelievable that a single decision, a fucking intangible thought, could so violently upset the flesh-and-bone scaffolding of daily life, the steady rhythm of the hours, the predictable, material color of the landscapes that give us nourishment and company.

As if navigating the unknown world of IVF treatment (“The chemical warfare begins”) and Samsa’s pregnancy was not enough, the growing alienation between Samsa and Boulder only widens, when Tinna, their child, comes into the picture (“The moment she was inseminated, Samsa changed”). Samsa is consumed by the daily intensity of early motherhood, her newly minted identity as a mother entrances her in a way that takes the edge off her relationship with Boulder. But Boulder’s desire is not quelled, and she struggles to adjust to this altered reality, deeply conflicted between sticking out with Samsa or going back to her old world of fleeting affairs, temptation always a stone’s throw away.

Yet, despite Boulder’s ambivalence towards motherhood and her increasingly fragile connection with Samsa, she does develop some kind of a bond with Tinna who delights her in unexpected ways.

I am under the thumb of a live, proliferating force that prevents me from leaving and threatens to sever my body, which wants to escape, from my head, which was made to stay.

Themes of motherhood, maternal ambivalence, how motherhood can alter the dynamics of a relationship, and the idea of freedom and independence are some of the themes explored in this poetic novella from a queer perspective.

Motherhood is the tattoo that defines you, brands life on your arm, the mark that impedes freedom.

There’s a continuous stream of conflicting ideas at the novella’s core and Boulder finds herself caught in this maelstrom – desire and passion versus family and responsibility, structure versus unpredictability, freedom versus responsibility, and solitariness versus company.

But what makes Boulder so striking is the language – strange, smoldering, feral, and sensual – as it captures the range of thoughts and emotions that rage within our narrator trying to adapt to a slew of significant changes unfolding around her. It simmers with arresting figures of speech (“The gray December sky skims the ocean, swollen with pain” or “His eyes are opalescent, like ice cubes at the bottom of a glass, tinged with a slow disquiet that draws me in”) and vivid descriptive sentences (“The window catches the light glowing faintly at every table and refracts it into countless fine beams that travel through the space and rise up to the ceiling, weightless as spores”). Having never read Eva Baltasar before, I immediately turned to the author bio after reading the first few pages, and was not surprised to learn that she is a poet; the beautiful, edgy writing in some ways reminded me a bit of Sarah Hall’s style of expression.

Moody and evocative, Boulder, then, is a memorable novella that deserves its place on the International Booker shortlist.

The Stone Angel – Margaret Laurence

I must thank Dorian, Frances and Rebecca, hosts of the lovely bookish podcast One Bright Book for bringing Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel to my attention; they will be discussing this novel in their next episode (very much looking forward to it). I loved it so much that I’ve already bought the next book in the Manawaka series, A Jest of God, and plan to read the others as well.

Set in the fictional region of Manawaka modeled on the province of Manitoba where Margaret Laurence grew up, The Stone Angel is a brilliant, poignant tale of loss, heartbreak, and old age with a fiery, unforgettable female character at its core.

The image of the stone angel greets the reader in the novel’s opening pages described by the protagonist as “my mother’s angel that my father bought in pride to mark her bones and proclaim his dynasty, as he fancied, forever and a day.” Placed in the Manawaka cemetery and made of marble, we are told that she was not the only angel there, but “she was the first, the largest and certainly the costliest.” As the years pile on, this marble angel loses much of her sheen due to neglect and apathy, and it is this deterioration that pretty much mirrors the journey of the novel’s central character.

And so we come to Hagar Shipley, the protagonist and narrator of this Canadian classic, who when the book opens is an old woman in her nineties staying with her eldest son Marvin and his wife Doris, who are in their sixties. Even at that age, Hagar still has her wits about her, and yet there are unmistakable signs that her health is failing, a fact that she is too proud to acknowledge.

For the most part, Hagar resents having to be looked after by Marvin and Doris; she desperately craves her independence, but even at her most vulnerable moments she’s forced to admit that she needs them. Marvin and Doris struggle to deal with Hagar’s intransigence; they aren’t young anymore either and their first suggestion of selling the house and moving to a smaller place is vehemently opposed by Hagar. But with the burden of caregiving proving to be quite onerous at least for Doris, they outline plans of shifting Hagar to an old age home where she can receive all the care she needs and it is this intention that ultimately unsettles Hagar. She rebels, both outwardly and inwardly, and makes one last attempt to fight for her independence, relying on her resourcefulness that has helped her move forward in a life that has only doled out disappointments, many of them a direct consequence of Hagar’s stubbornness.

Enmeshed with Hagar’s present and attempts to cope with old age are flashbacks and reflections on her past that are often triggered by certain objects or episodes in the current moment. We learn about Hagar’s childhood, particularly her relationship with her father Jason Currie whose stubbornness she seems to have inherited. Jason Currie was a self-made man who through sheer hard work and industriousness ran the Currie store in Manawaka, and these are qualities that he strives to imbibe in Hagar and her two brothers.

We then come to Hagar’s tumultuous marriage with Brampton Shipley and her difficult relationship with her sons that ultimately form the backbone of the novel; a central tragedy buried deep that Hagar refuses to talk about in the ensuing years, only to finally open up in the book’s final pages as these repressed emotions resurface.  

Sexually attracted to Brampton, a man around ten years older to her, Hagar marries him much against her father’s wishes, possibly as an act of rebellion, subsequently severing ties with him. But Hagar remains unhappy in their marriage; she is repelled by Brampton’s uncouth behaviour and his coarse manners which have none of the refinement familiar to her. Brampton is a farmer, but with no inclination to put in the discipline and hard work that the vocation requires; he latches on to frivolous money-making schemes that lead nowhere and shows a penchant for long bouts of drinking that frustrate Hagar.

Hagar’s relationship with her two sons is even more complicated, where she openly displays her favouritism – deeply loving one son while pretty much ignoring the other. Marvin, her eldest, is unfairly looked upon with scorn only because she perceives him to be similar to Brampton who she has grown to loathe. It is her younger son, John, who becomes the apple of her eye, to the point that she pins all her hopes on him. However well-intentioned she deems her motives to be, there’s a sense that she’s controlling John and he is trying hard to escape her claustrophobic influence. For all the love and sacrifice she showers upon John, he chooses a path that does not align with her vision for him. John slides into a vagabond life causing Hagar much anguish (“Wait until you have a son, and plan for him, and work like a navvy and it all comes to nothing”), and it is ironic that the qualities of sincerity and drive that she values so much and tries to instill in John pretty much go unnoticed in Marvin. This irony is not lost on John, who during one of their many heated discussions, states with crystal clear clarity (‘You always bet on the wrong horse,’ John said gently. ‘Marv was your boy, but you never saw that, did you?’).

Difficulties of old age, the heavy price of pride, how choices made in your youth can have an irreversible impact on the way your life subsequently shapes up, the complexity of family dynamics with its unshakeable baggage, and the notions of freedom and independence are some of the core themes explored in the novel. It is also a novel about how the same mistakes or behavioral traits often get passed down generations – for instance, Hagar had no qualms about rebelling against her father but struggles to understand John’s resistance towards her.

But The Stone Angel is all about Hagar Shipley; hell, the stone angel is Hagar Shipley, a symbolism made all the more poignant and powerful when the biggest tragedy of her life produces no tears as if she has turned into a figure of stone. Tough, resourceful, fierce, and a force to reckon with, Hagar’s life is marked by losses and failures which she has not been ready to accept. Displaying an unyielding personality for most of her life, she remains a disappointed woman whose decisions and choices cause deep, unbridgeable rifts in relationships with those closest to her. Hagar’s world is defined only by the way she sees it, she is unwilling to consider other viewpoints and it is this intransigence that in many ways forms the root cause of the tragedies she endures. If she has reached the age of ninety, it’s her resilience and determination to take things in her stride that have carried her there, but the reader senses no joy within her in the path she has chosen. It is perhaps telling that a fiercely proud woman who values freedom and independence above all else, is not free but bound by the shackles of her pride. Hagar likes to think that she does not care for what people think of her, but the reality is quite different and much of Hagar’s viewpoints and decisions are coloured by other people’s opinions.

Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched. Oh, my two, my dead. Dead by your own hands or by mine? Nothing can take away those years.

It is only in the last couple of chapters as Hagar is forced to come to terms with the difficulties and indignities of old age that the hardness that was stored up inside her begins to thaw; in a chapter where she miraculously bonds with a stranger, Hagar releases all her pent up emotions, particularly in connection with her son John. That revelation may have arrived a tad too late, but then perhaps not – Hagar does get an opportunity to finally acknowledge Marvin and there’s a sense that she may have ultimately found some peace.

In a story that is drenched with heartbreak and moments of sadness, it is Hagar’s powerful voice that balances the darkness with moments of pungent, acerbic wit; an aspect evident as much as in her conversations as in her interior monologues. These snatches of humour are particularly amplified in her observations as an old woman, which display a blend of both – wisdom gained through hindsight and a staunch refusal to bend to the will of others. She is particularly hard on poor Doris, who to be fair is not entirely likeable, but some of Hagar’s opinions on her daughter-in-law, as she gives her mind free rein, are priceless…

All would be lovely, all would be calm, except or Doris’s voice squeaking like a breathless mouse. She has to explain the sights. Perhaps she believes me blind.

‘My, doesn’t everything look green?’ she says, as though it were a marvel that the fields were not scarlet and the alders aquamarine. Marvin says nothing. Nor do I. Who could make a sensible reply?

On the face of it, Hagar Shipley is not exactly an easy character to like, but it is a testament to Laurence’s brilliant, sensitive writing that the reader is ultimately moved by the pain she has endured as well as by her willingness to finally let her defenses drop.

Laurence’s descriptive powers are also on full display throughout the novel, she has a way with words that conjures up a vivid sense of place. Here is one such passage when Hagar finds herself in a forest…

Enormous leaves glow like green glass, the sunlight illuminating them. Tree trunks are tawny and gilded. Cedar boughs hold their dark and intricate tracery like gates against the sky. Sun and shadow mingle here, making the forest mottled, changing, dark and light.  

A beautifully observed, poignant tale about a deeply flawed woman, The Stone Angel is a novel I’m glad to have read.

Hard to imagine a world and I not in it. Will everything stop when I do? Stupid old baggage, who do you think you are? Hagar. There’s no on like me in this world.

The Trouble with Happiness & Other Stories – Tove Ditlevsen (tr. Michael Favala Goldman)

Tove Ditlevsen first came to my attention three years ago with the publication of her remarkable The Copenhagen Trilogy, the three memoirs – Childhood, Youth and Dependency – released in slim, individual volumes by Penguin Classics. I loved that trilogy, some of the best books I read in 2019. Another book called The Faces, a lived experience of mental illness, was also pretty good. And now we have the latest offering, her short story collection, The Trouble with Happiness, another superb book that in terms of content and style pretty much mirrors the trilogy.

The Trouble with Happiness are terrific stories of fear, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, told by Ditlevsen in her customary frank, lucid, absorbing style. The book is an amalgamation of two collections – “The Umbrella” and “The Trouble with Happiness” with around ten to eleven stories under each. Just like the previous collections I have reviewed, I won’t focus on all of them but more on those stories that really stood out for me.

In the first story, “The Umbrella”, we are introduced to Helga who “had always – unreasonably – expected more from life than it could deliver.” Helga is presented to us as on ordinary woman having “never demonstrated a special talent of any kind.” She is hardworking, accommodating, and quiet and like her girlfriends interested in dancing and men, although she never displays the kind of desperation her friends sometimes do.

Over time, many small infatuations rippled the surface of her mind, like the spring breeze that makes new leaves tremble without changing their life’s course. 

But then Egon comes along, falling hard for Helga and they get engaged. Egon is a mechanic, interested in sports, and not culturally inclined, and yet during their days of courtship he reads poetry, using modes of expression very unlike him. Egon is happy with the fact that he is engaged to a chaste woman. But her first experience of physical intimacy leaves her confused with the sinking feeling that there was nothing very extraordinary about it.  For her parents though, it’s a perfect match, but Helga is beset by uneasiness, the source of which she can’t put a name to.

When she was half asleep, a strange desire came drifting into her consciousness: If only I had an umbrella, she thought. It occurred to her suddenly that this item, which for certain people was just a natural necessity, was something she had dreamed of her whole life. As a child, she had filled her Christmas wish lists with sensible, affordable things: a doll, a pair of red mittens, roller skates. And then, when the gifts were lying under the tree on Christmas Eve, she’d been gripped by an ecstasy of expectation. She’d looked at her boxes as if they held the meaning of life itself, and her hands had shaken as she opened them. Afterward, she’d sat crying over the doll, the mittens, and the roller skates she had asked for. “You ungrateful child,” her mother had hissed. “You always ruin it for us.” 

The umbrella, in many ways, symbolizes a secret desire, a want, and an alternate world that Helga keeps longing for and thinking about, because the reality has turned out to be a disappointment. While her life has all the hallmarks of respectability – a home, husband and child – Helga increasingly becomes indifferent, lost in her inner world. But then, a day dawns when she converts her desire for an umbrella to a reality that has dramatic consequences.

In “My Wife Doesn’t Dance”, an innocuous comment made by the protagonist’s husband opens the floodgates for a host of insecurities to spill out (“A hollow melancholy enveloped her with an unmerciful darkness she could not escape”). Our unnamed woman hears her husband answer the telephone, and tell the person at the other end who is advertising dance classes that his wife doesn’t dance. Nothing wrong with that statement when taken at face value, but for the protagonist it reveals many hidden meanings. We learn that she suffers from a limp that is quite conspicuous when she walks but it soon becomes apparent that this is a childhood torment that she hasn’t completely left behind, ready to resurface at the slightest hint. She is an accomplished woman capable of eloquently speaking on a variety of topics such as art, literature, politics and is married to a man who loves and desires her. So why is she on tenterhooks?

Did he think about it when they were out together? All the time? Had she lulled herself into a false sense of security here, inside the walls of the home they had created together?

In “Queen of the Night” we get a glimpse of a toxic marriage through the eyes of a young girl. When the story opens, Grete is kneeling on a chair observing her mother put on make-up for a carnival she’s about to attend, a spectacle that completely absorbs the young girls’ attention.  Grete’s father is nearby, seemingly fast asleep, after having worked a night shift, and the mother is anxious about not waking him up. Grete loves her mother’s costume called Queen of the Night that “made a nice crinkling sound when she moved”, the nicest and the most expensive dress in the catalogue. This costume becomes a symbol of how mismatched the couple is, money as always remains a bone of contention.

The cloth for that one had only cost two kroner, but her father, as usual, still had to calculate how many bags of oatmeal or pounds of carrots could have been bought with the money. What nonsense. They had oatmeal and carrots to eat anyway, and her mother didn’t get many chances to enjoy herself, and it wasn’t her fault he was unemployed half the year, so she had to go out and clean for other people.

Grete loves her mother and resents her father taunting her all the time (“Grete was completely convinced that they would be better off if her father wasn’t around”), and the reader observes a brief moment of bonding between father and daughter but that spell is quickly broken.

“One Morning in a Residential Neighbourhood” is a heartbreaking tale of a breakup of a marriage and family life and its shattering impact on the various parties involved. On one particularly cold morning, a young girl is wearing her new brown winter coat for the first time, in anticipation of a journey she is about to embark on with her father. Her nanny Miss Hansen is inconsolable, and wakes up the girl that morning unable to stop crying. The girl’s mother is also dazed, trying to brace herself for this difficult moment, vaguely aware that she is being judged and secretly admonished by everyone around her. The father is obviously coming to take the young girl away, as previously arranged with his wife, but the girl is unaware of the real circumstances of this ‘so-called trip’ she’s about to take with her father (“Children are so willing to be tricked to avoid the truth they don’t want to hear”).

In “Depression”, another excellent piece, a woman married to her depressed husband, comes pretty close to a nervous breakdown herself. The story opens with Lulu, washing stacked plates at the sink, dead tired after playing the perfect hostess at a house party. The festivities aren’t entirely over yet, her husband Kai, who has smoked and drank copiously, is still regaling his guests, but by this time Lulu could not be bothered. We learn that Kai is suffering from depression, the first bout having lasted five months…

Of course, it was unfortunate, but to her mind it wasn’t the end of the world. And certainly not for him. In the end, she was the one who had to do the heavy lifting.

Lulu is seemingly content and well-adjusted to Kai and his unemployment is not a nagging source of worry because they are supported by his parents financially. But a sense of discontent is gradually looming large within Lulu. Kai is visiting a psychoanalyst but it doesn’t seem to be helping, while the costs of those visits keep mounting. During periods when he manages to cast away the shackles of his mental illness, Kai becomes a transformed person, happy, carefree and eager to socialize. Those moments gladden Lulu but it feels fragile, as if a bomb is ticking, because the next bout of depression could just be around the corner ready once again to drown Kai. Meanwhile, Kai seems to be taking Lulu’s good health for granted, because Lulu often wonders “how he would take it if one day she ‘gave up’!” Until one day, she does come close to breaking point.

Bullying fathers and passive-aggressive behaviour forms the backbone of “The Knife”, another superb story and the first in the second collection. The father in this tale is an overtly cold, rational man who abhors affection and sentimentality.

One of the duties he adopted, for some obscure reason, was to show his family a cool and slightly accusatory tone, which was supposed to express his general attitude toward life, and reinforce his own estimation of himself as a rational person who disdained sentimentality.

He is married to a woman called Esther and they have a young son, although the father is ambivalent towards them, sometimes struck with the thought – “My life would have evolved quite differently if they weren’t around.”

Meanwhile, the father has gifted his son a very special knife, a relic that has passed hands through the generations. And the boy has been warned not to lose it and look after it well. Every Christmas, it becomes a tradition for the son to display the knife to his parents, but one Christmas, the son in a fit of extreme fear and panic is forced to confess that he has lost the knife. The mother senses the fear and immediately takes her son’s side, nonchalantly declaring that the knife is probably just misplaced and bound to turn up soon. The father, however, is livid. But is the father genuinely upset that a family relic has been lost or is he secretly happy at the chance of asserting his authority over his son?

“Anxiety” is an excellent but nerve-wracking tale of a claustrophobic marriage, of a woman distressed by her husband’s tyrannical behaviour only to find her world slowly shrinking. Married to a man who is a light sleeper, our protagonist’s life is defined by the tone of the creaking noises made by the bed on which her husband sleeps or tries to sleep. Gripped by the fear of rousing him and incurring his wrath, the woman is compelled to move around on tiptoe in her own home. Stressed by the momentous effort required to remain quiet, she often longs to just head out and spend time with her sister Henny. Until one day she does. At Henny’s welcoming home, bristling with warmth, noise and children, our protagonist experiences that rare pocket of joy where her doleful existence seems like a surreal dream. But soon it is time to head back home and to the suspense of wondering whether her husband noticed her absence or not…

In the “Two Women”, a woman looking to be luxuriously pampered in a salon so that she can leave her growing anxieties on the backbench for a while, comes out feeling more rattled than ever; while in “The Little Shoes”, an ageing woman laments her middle-age exacerbated by her lovely, spirited daughter and the possibility that her second husband is infatuated with his step-daughter. While in the titular story, “The Trouble with Happiness”, which has echoes of Childhood, a young woman decides to take charge of her own life by leaving behind her despondent family home so that she can harness her ambition of being a writer.

The Trouble with Happiness, then, is a biting, scalpel-sharp, devastating depiction of love, marriage and family; succinct, intense tales that make for compelling reading. These stories offer readers slices of domestic life in Copenhagen; gloomy, gut-wrenching situations which see her characters teetering on the edge. The women particularly are in a perpetual state of anxiety, paralyzed by an unnamable fear – unhappy in love, gripped by feelings of doom, grappling with stressed financial circumstances and unnerved by insecurities that sometimes threaten to overwhelm them. These haunting, unsettling vignettes, simmering with undercurrents of desire and violence, are made all the more arresting by Ditlevsen’s clear-eyed vision and an honest, lucid writing style that conveys multitudes in a few paragraphs.

It’s a rich, layered collection sizzling with a gamut of themes – mental illness, impact of broken marriages on children, bullying fathers, deteriorating relationships, a longing for happiness that is forever on the fringes seemingly an illusion. The subject matter, reminiscent of The Copenhagen Trilogy, is doled out to us in short, measured doses this time, but the brevity matches the brilliance of those memoirs. Highly recommended!

Letters to Gwen John – Celia Paul

I love books on art and creativity as well as hybrid narratives where the boundaries between genres are blurred – recent case in point being Nathalie Leger’s superb Suite for Barbara Loden. Celia Paul’s gorgeous work Letters to Gwen John, therefore, ticked all the right boxes for me.

Letters to Gwen John is a stunning meditation on the creative process, women making art, the pleasures of solitude, living life on your own terms, aging and loneliness.

It’s an imagined conversation between two artists – Gwen John and Celia Paul – born in different eras, and yet sharing striking similarities in terms of relationships and their approach to art. A wonderful blend of artistic biography, memoir and the epistolary form, Celia Paul addresses her letters to Gwen John giving readers insight into various facets of their personalities. For Celia Paul these letters are homage to an artist with whom she feels a kinship and a spiritual connection, a guiding light particularly during some challenging moments.

THE SIMILARITIES – A SMORGASBORD OF ASSOCIATIONS

Celia begins her narrative by highlighting the four postcards of paintings that are her personal favourites; one of them being the work titled The Convalescent by Gwen John (“Just one look at this reproduction of Gwen John’s painting and my breathing becomes easier”), and which also caught my attention because it graces the cover of my Virago edition of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage.  

We learn that both Gwen and Celia were students at the prestigious Slade School of Art. Gwen, particularly, came from an artistically inclined family. Her mother Augusta, an artist, named her younger brother who she loved dearly Augustus, and later there would be Auguste Rodin in Gwen’s life. Augustus was the first to gain entry into this prestigious art school, and Gwen subsequently followed.

The two men in Celia Paul’s life (first Lucian Freud and then her husband Steven Kupfer) had girlfriends called Kate before they met Celia, and Celia has a younger sister Kate who she is closest to, while Steven’s mother was called Kathe. And then Lucian was named after his mother Lucie because “she sensed a special bond with him at first sight.”

LOVE, BURNING PASSION AND YEARNING

Celia Paul then goes on to elaborate how both women fell deeply in love with and were profoundly influenced by men – the sculptor Auguste Rodin for Gwen and the artist Lucian Freud for Celia.

Gwen’s passion for Rodin is all consuming and claustrophobic. Initially posing as a model for him, that professional relationship quickly transforms into an affair. The passion that Gwen feels for Rodin is so intense, that when he is not around, the pining and yearning for him destabilizes her to the detriment of her art.

Celia experiences something similar. She meets Lucian while still studying at the Slade and a passionate affair soon develops. His absences keep her on tenterhooks; the debilitating longing for him affects her art. Disillusioned by the painting techniques taught at the Slade, Celia draws inspiration from Lucian in many aspects while attempting her paintings. And yet it’s a relationship fraught with awkwardness. Celia outlines the contrasting attitudes of the two women while posing as models for their paramours; Gwen is uninhibited while sitting for Rodin and posing comes naturally to her. But for Celia it is sometimes a momentous effort, partly because she is disconcerted by Lucian’s objective, piercing gaze.

There are differences also in how these relationships play out. Gwen’s intense feelings for Rodin finds an outlet in a frenzy of letters she sends to him where she unabashedly writes about how his lengthening spells of absences torment her. The single-minded nature of her emotions alarm Rodin to the point that he is concerned for her, but is also gradually driven away. Celia’s relationship with Lucian goes one step further; she has a son with him named Frank. But this is a romance that also peters out, a development that Celia gratefully welcomes with a sense of relief as time rolls on.

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

Letters to Gwen John is a book about women artists establishing their own identity in a field often dominated by men. Although encouraged in her art by her brother Augustus, Gwen often feels smothered by his proximity and influence and longs to get away so that she can blossom on her own and evolve independently as the artist she wants to be.

Both women strive for personal space, a physical domain they can truly call their own, a stamp of their monk-like personality. More importantly, it is free from the influence of their lovers, Auguste and Lucian, who can enter this private world as mere visitors and nothing more, the sharing of space strictly forbidden.

This desire is born out of the need for freedom to pursue their art (“We can be free if we are unseen. We are like nocturnal animals”), as well as a way to connect with their inner world (“Your aim has, always, was to lead a more and more interior life. We remain remote”).

SOLITIDE OR COMPANY?

Celia Paul has very eloquently painted a picture of the conflict that rages inside her – the aching need for solitude to practice her craft…

The peace is profound and it enters your soul to the extent that, even when you step outside, all sounds seem to be at a remove. The silence of the great ancient yew trees surrounding the tower seems to be at one with your own inner silence.

…which battles with the craving for company to ward off loneliness and old age.

I often think of those old women whom I have painted, my mother included, and I wonder at their quiet patience, and what inner reserves of strength they must draw on to keep up their courage and power to endue, riven as they all must be by memories and fear of the approaching dark.

ART & MOTHERHOOD – A DELICATE BALANCING ACT

One of my favourite books some years ago was Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, a fragmentary novella that dwells on the loss of identity and the mundaneness of new motherhood, where the protagonist laments that “she wanted to be an art monster.” Celia Paul experiences something of that as well. She wants to be a mother, Lucian encouraged it as well (although his relationship with their son Frank remained awkward and distant), and when the baby is born, Celia realizes that the demands of motherhood often clash with the discipline and quiet required for her art. And she struggles with this knowledge.

As a single parent of an angry adolescent son, I was in the spotlight, out of the shadows. Everything about me was exposed and judged. This exposure, and the world’s judgement that came with the exposure, is what prevented me from working truthfully. I was judged by Lucian, by my son, by my mother, by Bella. I lost confidence. There was no way, in the world’s eyes, that I could be a good mother – and I wanted to be a good mother now – while at the same time being a painter wholly committed to her art.

AN ODE TO THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I also loved the sections of the book that emphasized on the intricacies of the art-making process – the mixing of exotically named paints (Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Blue and so on), the challenges of the finished painting aligning with the artist’s vision, that ‘a-ha’ moment when you know that it has shaped up the way you had visualized it.

Painting is different from writing. A notebook or a laptop is a compact space for creativity. In order to paint you need paraphernalia: a palette, brushes, canvases, easel, and a room to yourself where it’s possible to be uninhibited – you need to be unconcerned about drips of paint landing on the carpet or staining the walls. We use words all the time. But painting is an acquired language that you need to practice every day, like playing an instrument: if you don’t, you lose your gift.

Akin to an image that quickly emerges from the deft strokes of a brush, these nuances of the artistic process are revealed to us in the later letters which focus on two of her paintings – “Copper Beech, Hampstead Heath” and “Weeping Willow”. Celia expertly illustrates the trials of completing these paintings, sometimes working on one painting only to move on to the other one and the unwavering focus required bringing it to fruition. And how the nature of the painting itself changes along the way.

BEAUTIFUL BOOK, WONDERFUL WRITING

Interspersed with sublime paintings by both artists, Letters to Gwen John is an exquisitely produced book and a pleasure to read. Through her frank, unadorned, graceful narrative style, Celia Paul draws us into her solitary world where the sea that “gently washes and laps like milk tilted from side to side in a bowl”, and the incoming waves that “obediently follow each other, like sheep brought home to the fold”, has as much of a calming effect on the reader as it does on Paul. A fabulous fusion of biography and memoir, the book is an illuminating depiction of two female artists, their ascetic personalities, the desire to assert their independence while making art, and how their art becomes a steadying force and pillar of strength while navigating personal difficulties and turbulence in their lives. The scope is wide-ranging and there is both a historical and contemporary feel to the narrative – from Gwen’s life at the turn of the 20^th century to the global Covid pandemic and lockdown.

In a nutshell, the rich palette of themes, the quiet confessional tone of Celia Paul’s letters and the melancholic beauty of the artworks meld into a unique form that is a work of art by itself; the stillness and peace captured becomes a joy to truly savour.