‘The Doll’s Alphabet’, stories by Camilla Grudova   (2017) – 162 pages

I read and was quite impressed by ‘Children of Paradise’ by Camilla Grudova, so I decided to read her earlier story collection ‘The Doll’s Alphabet’. Several critics praised ‘The Doll’s Alphabet’ very highly. However I did have my doubts due to the following line which was in a Guardian review by Nicholas Lezard which also extolled the collection.

“That I cannot say what all these stories are about is a testament to their worth. They have been haunting me for days now. They have their own, highly distinct flavour, and the inevitability of uncomfortable dreams.”

Nothing annoys me more than being unable to figure out what a story is about.

I did have some problems with some of the stories in ‘The Doll’s Alphabet’. The early stories can be described as experimental, surreal, and “Kafkaesque”. I usually try to avoid stories that are described as “Kafkaesque” because they are usually confusing, unpleasant, and bleak. Some of the stories in this collection did have those qualities.

Grudova’s descriptions of her characters and their rooms are usually nauseatingly disgusting and decrepit. This is intentional, I think. Here is just one example of many:

“I also took off my shoes, but the floor of her attic was dirty, covered with peeling linoleum, carpet and patches of wood, a repulsive mixture that reminded me of bandages that needed to be changed and the flaky, scabby skin underneath.”

OK, one more example:

“the often unclean fabric which often smelled like meat, soup, fruity liquors, and that fried-onions-and-mushroom scent which oozes from the bodies of grown men as if they were nothing but sacks of unwanted leftovers.”

Also some of these earlier stories contain long, long, interminable lists. This is a technique that is used often by today’s fiction writers but which I find off-putting.

“In her restaurant there were peacock feathers, plastic lilies, and flaking mannequin arms in vases, tin toys, devil and maiden marionettes that jiggled when the restaurant became busy,…” (and on and on and on)

Lists are fine as long as they are kept at a reasonable short length and do not distract from the rest of the story. Lists of things should be used sparingly and kept at reasonable length.

And I too cannot say what a couple of these stories are about. These stories are much easier to admire than to enjoy.

I do believe that the first story, ‘Unstitching’, is the real key to this entire story collection, and it is only two and one half pages long. It is based on the premise that girls, when they are little, are stitched together to become a woman who isn’t who they really are. Thus in order for a grown woman to become her real self, she must “unstitch” herself. However a little boy is allowed to grow up to be who he is, so if the boy tries to “unstitch” himself, he would only wind up hurt and disappointed.

Her characters are intentionally, relentlessly, unstitched. I get it, I think.

I felt that in the earlier stories of this collection, that Grudova was trying too hard to be experimental and Kafkaesque. It requires some effort by the reader to cut through these techniques to get to the real story, although it probably was a useful effort on Camilla Grudova’s part to make her stories have more depth. The later stories are easier to follow.

I much preferred ‘Children of Paradise’ which avoided some of these annoying off-putting techniques but kept the flakiness. ‘Children of Paradise’ is a much smoother read.

I will continue to read any new works Camilla Grudova writes.

Grade :   B