As Novellas in November is starting, I thought I’d recommend some novellas you might like to read. And after jotting down a few, I thought… would I be able to make a whole alphabet of them? Without repeating any authors? And, reader, I did. (Almost.)
I’m delighted that this A-Z isn’t just a list of novellas – it’s a list of excellent novellas. I was determined not to sacrifice quality, and I would happily press any of these into your hands and assure you of a brilliant time.
Happy reading! Do let me know if you’ve read any, or if you’re tempted to. You can find reviews of most of them in the review archive, or by searching in the search bar.
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
I find McEwan quite variable, but this book about the friendship between a composer and journalist – both lovers of a woman whose funeral is in the opening pages – is a page-turner of a dark comedy.
Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton
Told in 500 vignettes, Blue Postcards covers Yves Klein, Henri the tailor, and the narrator some decades later. It is well-researched, but told with a lovely looseness and freedom.
City of Glass by Paul Auster
The first of three novellas that make up The New York Trilogy, it’s also my favourite. A postmodern play on detective fiction, the protagonist is a detective novelist who gets a call asking if he is Paul Auster and, under that name, investigates a future murder. It is playful and odd, and extremely satisfying.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Another book in vignettes, this tells the story of a relationship – from dating to marriage to a lost pregnancy to a child to an affair. Somehow these stray fragments give us incredible depth of character.
Echo by Violet Trefusis
Translated from French, Echo is a fun, mischievous story of love and feuds in a Scottish castle that develops into a fablesque tone.
Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro
One of my favourite discoveries this year, the novella is in the form of a grandmother writing to her absent granddaughter – but, like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, this is really just a way of telling us about everything in the world of these fascinating women.
Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis
Henry Standish falls off a ship into the sea. And then the rest of the novella concerns the hours afterwards – as Standish is adrift in the ocean, and the passengers carry on with their lives. Lewis presents it all with true psychological acumen.
The Heir by Vita Sackville-West
A romance – where one of the lovers is a house. Having inherited an enormous home he can’t afford, the main character is keen to sell – but, as the point of losing the house grows nearer, he realises he can’t be parted from it. A beautiful example of how important home can be.
Ignorance by Milan Kundera
Translated from French, the novella opens with a Czech woman being asked why she is staying in France after her affair with a Frenchman is over – and Kundera uses it as a jumping-off point to explore the concept of nostalgia. As usual with Kundera, he swims and dashes all over the place, with The Odyssey and composer Arnold Schoenberg the points he often returns to.
A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence
A masterpiece of melancholy literature. Rachel lives with her mother in the small Canadian town where she grew up, feeling alone and hopeless. Into that world steps a man she used to know at school, and she begins to hope for the future – all the while doubting the security of these hopes.
A Kind Man by Susan Hill
What if a man had the power to miraculously cure people? Hill went through a period of writing short, powerful, parable-esque novellas, and this has a wry beauty and poignancy to it.
The Love Child by Edith Olivier
Up there with my all-time favourite novellas, The Love Child is about a childless spinster who accidentally conjures her imaginary childhood best friend into life – beginning a path of wish-fulfilment that descends into a power struggle. A brilliant slant on the ‘surplus women’ problem of the 1920s.
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
Almost a short story, this French classic is an allegory about a man who plants trees, as the title suggests. The very simplicity of the story is what is so striking. My edition (not the one pictured above) has sumptuous woodcuts by Michael McCurdy.
No Mama No by Verity Bargate
Don’t be put off by the terrible title – this isn’t a misery memoir. Instead, it is the sharp cry of a woman who hates having young sons – or, rather, hates the identity it has forced on her. Her only freedom is a parallel life where she pretends her sons are daughters. Sprase, odd, and breathtaking prose.
The Only Problem by Muriel Spark
Only Muriel Spark would bring together a theologian writing about the Book of Job with a story about a terrorist organisation. It’s quintessential Spark – strange, spiky, beguiling. You’ll see The Driver’s Seat recommended a lot this month, I’m sure, but it’s worth remembering how wide and deep her talents are.
Portait of Jennie by Robert Nathan
I think this could just sneak into novella territory – I certainly read it in one go, sat on a bench in Washington DC. An artist starts painting portraits of a young girl he meets in the park – but every time he meets her, she has somehow aged several years. A compelling fantasy book in Nathan’s usual readable, affectionate style.
Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff
Ok, it’s non-fiction, but Q is tricky, ok? It tells of the aftermath of 84, Charing Cross Road – the book’s success, adaptation onto stage, and the consequent whirlwind of fame Hanff experienced.
The Red House by E. Nesbit
Sadly there isn’t a decent edition of this around – my attempts to get it into the British Library Women Writers series have proved fruitless – but it’s a fun novel about a novelist who suspects her house might be haunted, as well as dealing with other domestic inconveniences. It is chiefly notable for some of her more-famous children’s book characters popping up as cameos.
The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns
Another one the British Library said no to, actually! Comyns is as strange and matter-of-fact as ever in her coming-of-age tale populated by bizarre and often dangerous characters – and, yes, a group of chairs covered in human skin.
Three To See The King by Magnus Mills
Mills’ books are always a clever mix of surreal and everyday, so that you feel disoriented but don’t quite know why. One of his best is about houses that turn up at long distances in a desert, and what is going on with a curious and charismatic newcomer in the district.
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
What would the Queen read? A fun tale about Queen Elizabeth II getting obsessed with books – starting with Ivy Compton-Burnett, which is often how people first come across her now, it seems.
Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg
Translated from Italian, and coming in at a mere 62pp, Ginzburg gets a whole world into Valentino – a world of resentment, pride, stubbornness and intrigue amongst a family.
Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
Not a great title, but a very good novella about girls Berie and Sils who work together at a sort of theme park, whose friendship splinters when Sils believes herself ready for adult life. It’s all told from the perspective of Berie in the future, which gives an added poignancy to the story.
X… ok, I had to give up on X. I did my best. I’m so sorry!
Yellow by Janni Visman
Stella is agoraphobic and neurotic, and Visman’s sparse narrative tells of her growing paranoia and attempts to control it. Hitchcockian and powerful.
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Imagine a woman so beautiful that a whole bunch of undegraduates drown themselves. Beerbohm has a lot of fun with this OTT parable of beauty and infatuation.
So, there you have it! A slightly incomplete alphabet of brilliant novellas. I do hope it has inspired you with something to read this November.
One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes is one of the worst-kept secrets of the mid-20th century, isn’t it? She isn’t a household name, and you might not even find that book in the average bookshop, but it’s well-known that One Fine Day is an absolutely extraordinary novel of life immediately after World War Two. Some of her stories are in print with Persephone, and her novel My Husband Simon was one of the first titles in the British Library Women Writers series – but, for such a well-regarded author, some of her books still remain a mystery.
