{"id":6580,"date":"2011-11-01T11:27:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T15:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=6580"},"modified":"2016-07-11T11:44:42","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T15:44:42","slug":"november-recommendations-novellas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/11\/01\/november-recommendations-novellas\/","title":{"rendered":"November Recommendations — Novellas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though I never caught wind of any genuine controversy\u00a0(certainly nothing that came close to the scope of the controversy the judges’ statements sparked), after\u00a0Julian Barnes won this year’s Man Booker Prize for his “short novel” The Sense of an Ending<\/em> (my review here<\/a>) there were still questions about whether the book was\u00a0long enough\u00a0for the prize, which goes to the “best\u00a0eligible full-length novel,” “full-length novel” never being defined.\u00a0The Sense of an Ending<\/em> is\u00a0only the second-shortest book to win the prize, the shortest being Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore<\/em> (my review here<\/a>). Shorter ones have been finalists, including J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country<\/em> (my review here<\/a>) and even William Trevor’s “Reading Turgenev,” which is one novella that forms\u00a0his book Two Lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when Barnes won, there were a few interesting bits of commentary on The Guardian<\/em> website, one from Laura Bennett called “When is a short novel a ‘novella’?” (here<\/a>)\u00a0and one from Claire Armistead called “When is a novel\u00a0not a novel?\u00a0When it’s a novella” (here<\/a>). Each uses Barnes’ win to think about the novella’s bad reputation. Publishers don’t like\u00a0novellas because they don’t sell, so either they don’t publish them or they call them “short novels.” In Bennett’s piece, Armistead\u00a0is quoted as saying, “[The term novella]\u00a0has fallen into\u00a0disuse because it sounds like a patronising diminutive\u00a0— without the scope of a novel or the discipline of a short story.” In her own piece, Armistead says, “I wonder whether part of the image problem of the English-language novella, at least, is the association of length with vigour.”<\/p>\n

In the comments below Armistead’s piece, John Self quotes Saul Bellow’s introduction to Something to Remember Me By<\/em>, Bellow’s book of three novellas:<\/p>\n

Some of our greatest novels are very thick. Fiction is a loose popular art, and many of the classic novelists get their effects by heaping up masses of words. Decades ago, Somerset Maugham was inspired to publish pared-down versions of some of the very best. His experiment didn\u2019t succeed. Something went out of the books when their bulk was reduced. It would be mad to edit a novel like Little Dorrit<\/em>. That sea of words is a sea, a force of nature. We want it that way, ample, capable of breeding life. When its amplitude tires us we readily forgive it. We wouldn\u2019t want it any other way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet we respond with approval when Chekhov tells us, \u201cOddly, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read\u00a0— my own or other people\u2019s works\u00a0— it all seems to me not short enough.\u201d I find myself emphatically agreeing with this. [. . .]\u00a0At once a multitude of possible reasons for this feeling comes to mind: This is the end of the millennium. We have heard it all. We have no time. We have more significant fish to fry. We require a wider understanding, new terms, a deeper penetration.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rather than just list a few of my recommendations this month (which I still do below), I wanted to see what people think of novellas. Me? I love them. Many of the best books I’ve reviewed on this blog are novellas, which neither lack the scope of a novel or the discipline of the short story. I’m sometimes surprised at commenters here and there who say they don’t like novellas (or short stories). One on this site, intrigued by a short book,\u00a0had the courage to admit, “I generally do away with the short reads because I feel like it is rarely done well.” I think this is a prevalent misconception, similar to the misconception people have about contemporary literature in translation.\u00a0All things considered, the large English novel is rarely done well either, so usually the problem is not the novella (or the literature in translation) but that the readers are generally unaware of what’s out there (so they don’t buy them, so publishers hesitate to publish them, so they get even less attention, and so on).<\/p>\n

But the great thing about this day and age is that\u00a0novellas\u00a0that are done well are readily available, so there’s no reason to avoid them.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the novella? Do you read them? Do you avoid them? If you avoid them, why? And have you read enough of them to form a solid opinion?<\/p>\n

Here are some of my favorites I’ve reviewed on this blog (I’m not holding myself to five this month).<\/p>\n