Two wintery novellas

I hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas! Perhaps I should apologise for being quite an intermittent blogger for the past month or two, but those sorts of apologies always presuppose that anybody has noticed! Let’s not flatter ourselves that your festive season was spoiled by my absence.

And since the festive season is not over, I wanted to share a couple of wintery novellas that I read recently. It’s a bit late to get in the mood for Christmas, but I think these would be rather lovely at any point during this time of year.

Lanterns Across the Snow (1987) by Susan Hill

There is a real luxury to this book – or at least to my 1987 edition from Michael Joseph. It’s less than 80 pages, but the wide margins, hardback cover, and occasional woodcut-esque illustraiionss by Kathleen Lindsley make it feel precious. I don’t doubt that it was designed to appeal as a Christmas present – and that is exactly what it was for me in 2019. This is how it opens:

Last night, the snow fell. And then I began to remember. I remembered all the things that I had forgotten. Or so it had seemed.

But not forgotten after all. They were all there, stored away like treasures.

Last night, the snow fell.

Fanny is an old woman. There is nobody left who remembers her childhood – which must be around the turn of the century. But she remembers – and she settles down to reflect on one particular Christmas, when she was nine years old.

Her father was a rector, and so Christmas is a time where the whole household is busy: not just the busyness of celebration and family, but the high point of the church calendar. While there will be a church-full on Christmas Day, the first day that Fanny remembers is Christmas Eve – and she slips down the path between rectory and church to join in a service that her father is giving to one man, the verger. Nobody else has attended, but Fanny’s presence is noticed by her father, even if he doesn’t comment. The words of Evensong are there in the dialogue – “O Lord, save they people / And bless thine inheritance” – that have a beautiful timelessness to them. They are words I say and hear once a month in our local church still, and they are woven into Fanny’s memories as the rhythm of everyday life – and communication with a much-loved, now long-gone, Father.

Over Christmas Day itself, two important things happen to people in the parish. A baby is born; an elderly parishioner dies. We see them through the excited, cautious, wondering perspective of young Fanny – filtered quietly through the distanct perspective of old Fanny. Though birth and death are, of course, defining experiences, this particular birth and death do not define Fanny. These are important things that once happened to other people, near her – remembered as a particularly significant Christmas, but moreso as representative of a world that she once lived in that is far away now.

Lanterns Across the Snow is a simple story, simply told, but more than the sum of its parts. Hill laces it beautifully with emotion and reflection that is too subtle to be simply nostalgia – and yet, nostalgia is the best word I can think for it. The novella is moving and poignant. There are no surprise twists or sudden ironies. It is a beautiful little tale and perfect for a cold winter evening.

Snowflake (1952) by Paul Gallico

There is something about Michael Joseph and beautiful little wintery books, as they also published this 64-page novella by Paul Gallico. If you have much familiarity with Gallico, you’ll know that he can veer in different directions. Some of his books are fey, whimsical, and maybe even sickly sweet. Some are vicious, dark, even shocking. And many combine elements of the two in a way that feels distinctly Gallicoian.

Here’s how the story opens:

The Snowflake was born on a cold, winter’s day far up in the sky, many miles above the earth.

Her birth took place in the heart of a grey cloud that sswept over the land driven by icy winds.

It all came about from one moment to the next. At first there was only the swollen cloud moving over the tops of the mountains. Then it began to snow. And where but a second before there had been nothing, now there was Snowflake and all her brothers and sisters falling from the sky.

The rest of the novella follows Snowflake’s life – and Gallico does lean into anthropomorphism. Depending on your taste, he may lean too far into it. It’s this element of the story that brings both the fey and the occasional shock. Snowflake finds herself lying on the ground, enjoying the beautiful surroundings – then in sharp pain when a sledge cuts through her. Being piled on by further layers of snow crushes her shape and makes it hard to breath. Respite seems to come in being massed into the form of a snowman – but it is also humiliating and sore.

Who would ever think of snowflakes feeling pain? There is much that is about beauty, performance and sparkle – the sort of things you might expect from a Disneyfication of snow – but Gallico insists upon the rough with the smooth. Melting is next – but don’t worry, it isn’t armageddon for little Snowflake. Instead, she meets Raindrop in a stream. They marry (!) and have children (!!) and despite how ridiculous that sounds, there is something curiously magical in the way Gallico describes their contented time living together in a lake.

But this is temporary. They eventually are siphoned out of the lake – and, worst of worst fears, used in a firefighter’s hose to be sprayed into a fire. And so the exciting, unexpected story continues.

If someone described Snowflake to me, I’m not sure I would rush towards it. But Gallico is so unusual and excellent a writer that he persuadses the reader – this reader, at least – to come along for the ride in the most unusual of stories. It is curiously emotional, and he whirls together the beautiful, poignant, fanciful and dark into one surprisingly successful mix.

Don’t be fooled by that lovely cover. This isn’t a story for children. Rather, it ends up being a strangely affecting take on the highs and lows of almost any life – and the hope for satisfaction when it is all looked back upon as one whole.