The power and endurance of fairy tales comes from their episodes of danger and injustice, which are resolved by satisfying endings. To get to these endings – and sometimes within them – there is often a surprising amount of violence and cruelty. The potential of the classic formula to endure in remakes was recognized by Angela Carter and is also evident in Boy with black cock by Stefanie vor Schulte, translated from the German by Alexandra Roesch (The Indigo Press, 192 pages, £12.99).
The adventure begins as Martin, a young orphan with an ever-present rooster, watches as three men fail in their futile attempts to find the key to a small church to allow entry to a painter hired to paint a mural. Through his role in developing a mystical solution to the problem, Martin begins a friendship with the painter that they will soon leave together, but not before Martin witnesses a man on horseback kidnapping a young girl, and develops deep feelings for a girl named Franzi.
There are many mishaps and dangers before the easily predictable ending is reached. But even considering the flaws, it is a thoroughly entertaining story. Much more could have been made of the rooster’s ability to speak, for example, and the translation occasionally falters. But the Bruegel-esque medieval setting and Jacque le Fataliste-esque carefreeness in the face of violence and hardship give the story a sense of warmth nonetheless.
A similar feeling of goodness permeates Goodnight, Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida, translated from the Japanese by Haydn Trowell (Europa Editions, 174pp, £14.99), but in a very different setting. Each linked episode takes place between 1am and 4.30am in the suburbs and back streets of the city, with the characters searching for either specific objects or other people. The objects are objects that Mitsuki needs as props for a film. She is helped in her search by taxi driver Matsui, who will later drive a man called Shuro, the subject of a series of films for which Mitsuki has sourced the props.
Thus begins a series of clever connections, with Matsui always at the center of them—despite his solitary nature. In fact, you get the feeling that all the characters are helping others because such contact makes the absence they feel in their own lives more bearable. With its nighttime setting, its frequent references to movies, and the characters’ vacillation over their dreamlike experiences, this playful novel has a whimsy that disappears in the harsh light of day.
A more lasting sense of connection is firmly present in Untold stories by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, translated from the Italian by Jill Foulston (Pushkin Press, 270pp, £16.99), although here too the main characters are loners, either by choice or by accident. ‘Instead of going to school, the teacher went into the woods,’ is the first sentence of this gripping novel in which teacher Silvia hides from her community after the suicide of one of her pupils, an eleven-year-old girl called Giovanna.
Silvia has been concerned for some time about the girl’s regular absences from school, and a phone call to her mother sets up a sequence that ends with the girl’s death and Silvia’s guilt. Another disillusioned character, a bullied boy named Martino – new to the Italian village where the novel is set – finds the teacher in a dilapidated shed in the woods. One lost person has found another, and Silvia asks Martino to keep it that way and not to reveal her whereabouts.
From this central mystery, the author broadens the perspective to include many other characters whose feelings and memories are clarified or confused by the death and disappearance. Silvia retreats into her own memories and hunger-induced hallucinations. The attentive, unfussy, beautifully translated writing style frequently wanders into nature and the irrelevant, resulting in a satisfying and deeply felt novel.
As Maddalena Vaglio Tanet explains in an author’s note, her novel has its origins in a true story. The same applies to Jellyfish have no ears by Adèle Rosenfeld, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman (MacLehose Press, 220pp, £10.99). But fortunately, what initially seems like an autofictional work about the author’s failing hearing turns out to be a work of vivid imagination.
This development begins when Louise, the narrator, visits a clinic to have her hearing tested. As part of the procedure, she is forced to listen to the story of a soldier returning home. Ultimately, he returns home to her and becomes a companion in her quiet world. He is later joined by a dog and a botanist, whose existences depend on Louise’s rich imagination. The question of whether she will accept an implant that will allow her to hear, albeit in an altered way, leads to some fascinating reflections on the nature of hearing and language. This is particularly well illustrated by her “sound herbarium,” in which she records her attempts to describe what she hears. A storm is a “burning ice cap.” Fried onions are the “murmur of drunken hares.” These surrealist turns of phrase – often coupled with amusing puns – are subtly woven into the flow of this superb, surprising novel, and have been expertly translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, who explains in his translator acknowledgments that he has a special affinity for this book.
Simon, the main character of The hairdresser’s son by Gerbrand Bakker, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer (Scribe, 268pp, £10.99) is a distant, withdrawn individual whose behaviour can perhaps be explained by the probable death of his father in a catastrophic plane crash before the boy was born. That crash – based on the collision of two planes on the runway at Tenerife airport in 1977 – is treated matter-of-factly in this otherwise well-constructed, playful novel about three generations of hairdressers.
A keen swimmer, he helps his mother look after a group of special needs youths at a swimming pool. When one of them, a non-speaking boy named Igor, seems to initiate an intimacy with Simon, he feels both stimulated and embarrassed. This leads to moments of sustained tension in the novel, when Simon, who thinks Igor is exceptionally handsome, suggests to his mother that he might get a haircut in the empty barbershop.
The power imbalance between them and Igor’s inability to engage in physical action become extremely disturbing. Self-serving thinking was also a trait of the father, whom Simon never met. The novel is written in a plain language that suits Simon’s dispassionate personality. But as Bakker showed with his Dublin Literary Award-winning novel The Twin, direct determination can go a long way.
The same could be said about The sign by Fríða Ísberg, translated from the Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer (Faber, 294pp, £16.99), which raises many questions about the nature of society, using language that is only disorienting when it uses terms that, while familiar, have been redefined within the community depicted. The novel’s effectiveness comes from distorting our familiar polity just enough to allow us to see a clearer reflection of what we really are like. In this way, the novel attempts to capture the spirit of the times, and to a large extent it succeeds.
A stratified city, with regions “marked” so that only those with passes can enter, seems to formalize a factual reality. The novel’s form lets characters change in non-linear chapters and is intentionally confusing until connections emerge. A referendum is to be held on whether to intervene in people’s lives and try to change their fate for the better. A test is administered in schools to determine students’ empathy. Those who fail fear exclusion and often kill themselves.
In the novel, we are given insight into the lives of people from all walks of life: the person leading the referendum campaign and the young people who sent him threatening messages. We meet a teacher who says of a student, “Every word she says is a show, every word she says is dramatized.” This is one of many sharp observations about social media and its impact, but when she speaks to the girl’s mother, she is condescending and cruel. This clearly points to the hypocrisy of this supposedly caring, compassionate society.
The novel effectively points to a conclusion commonly expressed today, namely that there is something in society as we know it that is not working, or that is working only for a few. Interestingly, it is difficult to say unequivocally whether this criticism is politically left or right. The distrust of government and the questioning of the motivations and manipulations of authority could come from either side, or both at the same time. By eschewing a clear polemical stance, Ísberg has written a novel that asks many important questions about the future we create every day.
