The Ebony Hand by Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain is a local author whose work I came across when I was researching the county of Norfolk, where I have lived for the past two and a half years. I have never been drawn to her work before, when working in the bookshop, but was at a loss of short stories for my challenge and this, part of The Darkness of Wallis Simpson collection, seemed appropriate.

Set in the 1950s, still in the aftermath of the Second World War, The Ebony Hand is the story of a spinster living a contented quiet existence in a small Norfolk village. She works part-time in a haberdashery shop, a quiet job that she loves, and becomes enamoured with an ebony glove hand on the counter, that she polishes and dresses with loving care. After the death of her sister from influenza, her brother-in-law checks himself into the local mental asylum; leaving their thirteen-year-old daughter, Nicolina, with no family.to take care of her. Our protagonist takes the girl in and raises her, despite knowing little about raising children, and finds her peaceful life shattered. Determined to find a good husband for Nicolina, she settles upon Paul Swinton, a good hardworking young man devoted to her niece, but she is thwarted by teenage emotions.

My favourite passage concerned Nicolina’s father, a tragic figure in his madness, fixating on the bull in the field opposite the asylum and attempting to hatch eggs on his windowsill.

“Victor was given a small room with orange curtains and a view of some water-meadows where an old grey-white bull foraged for grass among kingcups and reeds. Victor said the bull and he were ‘as one’ in their abandonment and loneliness. He said Aviva had held his mind together by cradling his head between her breasts. He announced that the minds of every living being on the earth were held together by a single mortal and precarious thing.”

Another passage perfectly describes how someone can pin their hopes on something unusual and inanimate as this ebony hand.

“When Victor said what he said about our minds being held together by peculiar things, I thought to myself that the peculiar thing, in my personal case, was this wooden hand. It was well made and heavy and smooth. I polished it with Min cream once a week. I enjoyed the way it had never aged or altered. And I began to think that this hand was like the kind of man I had to find for Nicolina: somebody who would not change or die.”

The Ebony Hand has a gentleness to it, a sweet tragedy to its main character. All her time and effort is spent on this young girl who disappoints her, but to whom she remains loyal, the faithful aunt and protector. She focuses all her hopes on this inanimate object, the ebony hand, only to have the haberdashery close and the hand sold and lost beyond her reach. It is a fragile tale, of love, loss and longing. As someone relatively new to the world of short stories, I found it charming and bittersweet.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

"Magic, madam, is
like wine and,
if you are not used
to it, it will make
you drunk."

Those of you who have read my blog in the past may have realised that I have fallen head over heels in love with Susanna Clarke's writing. I did not cope well with Dickens at school and to this day have never finished any of his novels. Then I discover Ms Clarke, who writes like a modern day Dickens, and her fabulous book, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. A mysterious journey through the Napoleonic era, following the rivalry of two magicians, and their effect on the fate of English magic. Now one of my favourite novels, and reviewed here, it left me wanting more.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu is a collection of short stories set in the same world as magic and faery as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. There are eight stories, each written in the same delectable style, and each delving into a different faery story.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu is perhaps the story most reminiscent of Clarke's first novel, introducing us to a trio of female magicians and their struggle to get accepted by their male counterparts. Jonathan Strange himself makes an appearance in this glorious tale of magic, superstition and vengeful owls.

On Lickerish Hill is the tale of a sly woman who sells her daughter to a nobleman, under the proviso that in the last month of the first year of their marriage, she must spin five skeins of flax every day. The young woman, as cunning as her mother, devises a way to fulfill her husbands demands, by making a deal with a fairy. All she has to do, is discover his name, or her life will be his.

Mrs Mabb is the sad tale of a young woman who loses her love to the mysterious Mrs Mabb. Only her determination can rescue her love.

The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse is an amusing story, set in Gaiman's fictional village of Wall. There in The Seventh Magpie Inn, the Duke of Wellington quarrels with a local villager over a pair of embroidery scissors and is later forced to cross the Wall to retrieve his stallion, released in spite by the angry man. There he discovers a small house where a young woman is embroidering some beautiful images of the Duke's past and possible future. When faced with his own death in gloriously coloured thread, the Duke must take matters into his own hand.

Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower, is a series of extracts from the diary of a young Italian man, who takes a position as cleric in a small town, where he has hopes over marrying well and creating a good home for himself. There he encounters a Fairy Widower, only to learn and discover more about his heritage and future destiny.

Tom Brightwind or How the Fairy Bridge Was Built at Thoresby is the tale of a young Jewish doctor and his fairy friend, travelling to visit a sick patient, when they come upon the poor begotten village of Thoresby. Tom is persuaded to build a fairy bridge across the river with unforeseen results.

Antickes and Frets is the tale of Mary, Queen of Scots, thrown into prison by her cousin, Elizabeth, and who ends up in the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his ambitious wife. She soon begins to suspect that the Countess had gotten where she was through dark means in her embroidery. Mary endeavours to use the same means to get rid of her cousin and thus usurp the throne of England.

The final story, John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner, is an amusing tale of a Charcoal Burner (and his pig Blakeman!), whose life is rudely interrupted by the Raven King himself, and who enlists Saints to have his revenge on Uskglass.

Clarke's style is perfect for me. She manages to write about a world so unusual and unfamiliar to us, yet makes it so evocative and believeable that I for one, got completely sucked in. Her writing is a sheer delight to read, and I found myself having to take breaks after each short story, just as I would with a great novel, in order to really digest and enjoy the experience. My fear was that the next story would never be as good, but each was as good as the last.

A fabulous collection by a wonderful author. I cannot recommend these stories enough, and dearly hope that Susanna Clarke writes more very soon.

Snow - Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson is well known as an extraordinary woman, and writer of children’s stories. Most famous for her stories of the Moomins, Jansson reached more recent acclaim after her death, with the publication of two collections of short stories, The Summer Book and The Winter Book. I remember loving the Moomin stories as a child, and wanted to select one of Jansson’s short stories for this challenge. I selected Snow as I was drawn to the simple title, I knew nothing of the content of any of these stories.

Snow appears to be a simple story. A child and her mother have moved to a strange old house, which is permeated with the memory of the previous family. The mother is relaxed and settled there, finding peace from the outside world. The child however, finds no comfort, becoming obsessed with the falling snow outside, and the prospect of being buried forever in a terrifying snow drift. I said appears to be a simple story. Snow is really about the unfamiliar, about resisting change and the unknown, but about finding hope in family, in companionship. Ali Smith, who selected this collection, described A Winter Book as "Beautifully crafted and deceptively simple-seeming, these stories are pieces of scattered light."

Jansson's writing itself is beautiful. Much of her work is semi-autobiographical, and this is understandable when reading her descriptions of the empty rooms, of the sounds and light, and about a child's reaction to the unknown, the silence, the resignation. You can feel the child's loneliness and confusion, being removed from her own life and deposited in a large, empty, old house.

"If you stood in the furthest room, you could see through all the other rooms and it made you feel sad; it was like a train ready to leave with its lights shining over the platform. The last room was dark like the inside of a tunnel except for a faint glow in the gold frames and the mirror which was hung too high on the wall. All the lamps were soft and misty and made a very tiny circle of light. And when you ran you made no noise."

Since reading Snow, I have read more about Tove Jansson, a fascinating woman of nature, who lived her life in the towns and islands of Finland, living well into old age, and her work is permeated with her life experiences and love of the natural world around her. Reviews of other stories in A Winter Book are heaped with praise, and thus I will certainly be reading the rest of this and other collections. I will however be waiting for the appropriate season for the rest of this wintry collection, as I think the glorious sun beaming down on me while reading about Snow did hamper my enjoyment just a little! Definitely one for being curled up in front of the fire, with snow falling outside.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish - J.D. Salinger

The first title read for my Short Story Reading Challenge and I may have placed the bar a little high! A Perfect Day for Bananafish was first published in the New Yorker, in 1948, in the aftermath of a World War and at the dawn of American consumerism. It was later published as the first in Salinger's Nine Stories. Bananafish follows a young couple, Seymour Glass and his wife Muriel, on a holiday in Florida.

The first half of the story introduces us to Muriel in her hotel room, making a telephone call to her mother, a conversation that intermittently switches between the topics of Seymour’s emotional instability and fashion. Their discussion alludes to a car accident caused by Seymour’s fragility and distraction, and Muriel’s mother’s fears for her daughter’s safety. The story then takes us to a young girl, Sybil, left to play alone on the beach by her mother. Sybil finds a perfectly cheerful Seymour, who takes her for a swim, telling her the story of the bananafish.

On publication, this short story was highly acclaimed, as an important topic for discussion in the years after the war, dealing with the shell-shocked young men, very like Seymour, who survived, but were forever changed by their experiences.

The reader is not invited too close. Seymour and Muriel are referred to as the young man, or the girl, their names only being spoken by other characters, the telephone operator and Muriel’s mother. This combined with it being a short story allows the reader to keep a distance, although this certainly did not dampen my feelings at the dramatic ending. Muriel’s character appears somewhat cold, and it would be easy for the reader to lay some blame on her for Seymour’s current state.

But what Salinger shows here is that depression cannot always be readily visible, one can be cheerful and go about your day regardless of inner turmoil. That is not to say there are no signs, Muriel’s mother alludes to some of the events where Seymour has lost control. But Muriel seems oblivious to her husband’s struggle, and it is difficult to say whether this is intentional or genuine ignorance. Sybil’s mother too is somewhat detached, leaving her daughter to play alone on the beach, while she returns to the hotel bar for a cocktail. Seymour's encounter with Sybil is endearing and playful, as if he were searching for a way to return to to the ease and simplicity of childhood himself, lost in a moment where there are no responsibilities, no consequences. It is entertaining Sybil and the tale of the bananafish that lead to this “Perfect Day” for Seymour.

I found this story beautifully meaningful, most especially because so many soldiers have returned from war as changed men, haunted by what they have seen and experienced. In telling a simple tale of one poignant day in the life of a married couple, Salinger has conveyed all the sadness and post-war confusion apparent in Seymour’s life. The bananafish is a welcome respite, a moment of amusment and childish fantasy, about which I could have read a entire story! Highly recommended, this short story will stay with you.