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Dear Amy, The Romance of a Shop (1888) is all about framing: depending on the way we turn our lens and the point where we choose to…… Read more “The fathomless ocean on which they had set out with such unknowing fearlessness”
Category: Scarlet Letters
We can be an army of two
Dear Isabel, Patience and Sarah (originally self-published in 1969 as A Place For Us) reads like going on a journey outside the closet while remaining firmly locked…… Read more “We can be an army of two”
Our desires for beauty and rareness
Dear Vernon, The novella A Phantom Lover (first published in 1886, and later collected in Hauntings in 1890, as ‘Oke of Okehurst’) reads like a claustrophobic hall…… Read more “Our desires for beauty and rareness”
A creature of strength and grace and beauty and softness
Dear Florence, Her Father’s Name (1876) features the best (and worst) of what a Victorian Sensational novel has to offer: an exotic location, murder, a cross-dressing heroine with…… Read more “A creature of strength and grace and beauty and softness”
Put a berry for a heart,
Dear Mourning Dove, How many stories can fit inside one story? Comparing the two versions of the tales collected in Coyote Stories (1933) and Tales of the…… Read more “Put a berry for a heart,”
There was no new order
Dear Natália, Controle (2019, ‘Control’, not translated yet) is a novel centred on an absence. Our protagonist, she’s lost control, and she’s clinging to the nearest passer-by:…… Read more “There was no new order”
Just a desire, begun
Dear Natália, Amora: Stories (2020, tr. Julia Sanches. Original: Amora, 2015) begins with ‘First Times’ and ends with ‘Profanation’ – and, for that alone, I knew this collection…… Read more “Just a desire, begun”
I turned her into a tree so that she would stop trembling
Dear Irmgard, Child of All Nations (2008, tr. Michael Hofmann. Original: Kind aller Länder, 1938) is all about voice. Not bitter nor cheerful, but something in-between. It…… Read more “I turned her into a tree so that she would stop trembling”
A flower silence, completely unfolded,
Dear Getrud, The two prose works collected in A Jewish Mother from Berlin: A Novel/ Susanna: A Novella (1997, tr. Brigitte M. Goldstein) read like disenchanted but…… Read more “A flower silence, completely unfolded,”
Would they really spend their lives watching the street from inside their portraits?
Dear Norah, People in the Room (2018, tr. Charlotte Whittle. Original: Personas en la sala, 1950) is a slow exercise in estrangement: when we least expect, we…… Read more “Would they really spend their lives watching the street from inside their portraits?”
Was she the angel of longing, lost in the solitude of the night?
Dear Emília, Your novel A Rainha do Ignoto (1899, ‘Queen of Ignotus’) is like a chameleon: when we least expect, it changes colour. When a young bachelor,…… Read more “Was she the angel of longing, lost in the solitude of the night?”
Everything, by virtue of coming into existence, is doomed to pass
Dear Ricarda, The Last Summer (2016, tr. Jamie Bulloch. Original: Der letzte Sommer, 1910) feels like a treasure chest full of letters. As we read through them,…… Read more “Everything, by virtue of coming into existence, is doomed to pass”
It’s like a bridge leading you to the other side
Dear Ru Zhijuan, The Path through the Grassland (tr. Yu Fanqin. Original: 草原上的小路, 1979) begins and ends on a vast piece of uncultivated land, crossed by a…… Read more “It’s like a bridge leading you to the other side”
Their movement through life is invisible
Dear Jokha, Celestial Bodies (2018, tr. Marilyn Booth. Original: Sayyidat al-Qamar, 2010) revolves around a family and their household members, in an Omani village, in the late 20th…… Read more “Their movement through life is invisible”
Her compelling mouth, the scent of lavender and cigarette smoke
Dear Dola, Set in Amsterdam on the eve of World War II, The Tree and the Vine (2020, tr. Kristen Gehrman. Original: De thuiswacht, 1954*) is narrated…… Read more “Her compelling mouth, the scent of lavender and cigarette smoke”
My soul, mad as a moth,
Dear Auta, The poems in your Horto (1900, ‘Garden’ or ‘Orchard’) address the topics of death, idealized love, childhood, romantic loss, spirituality, and the sublimation of suffering…… Read more “My soul, mad as a moth,”
Oh, stag of mine, darling stag, my one and only
Dear Ariana, Die, My Love (2017, tr. Sarah Moses & Carolina Orloff. Original: Matate, Amor, 2012) is all about voice: a short musical piece of sustained rage,…… Read more “Oh, stag of mine, darling stag, my one and only”
It isn’t a circle–it is simply a long line
Dear Lorraine, I love how inconclusive your portrait of a 1950’s working-class African American family is in A Raisin in the Sun (1959) – the way it…… Read more “It isn’t a circle–it is simply a long line”
