The Novella by Bronwen Griffiths
I’m a sucker
for novellas. I always seek them out in the bookshops, although they are
sometimes hard to locate, their narrow spines often lost between the thicker
books on the shelves. Once popular, the novella has languished in the past few
decades and it was difficult, as a writer, to sell a novella to a publisher or
agent. But, today the novella is having a bit of a revival. Some American
magazines will accept novellas, Bath Fiction recently had a competition for the
novella-in-flash and there are now small publishing houses, such as Peirene
Press in London, who publish novellas in translation and Melville House in the
USA.
What exactly
is a novella? It’s a short novel, yes, between twenty and forty thousand words -
long enough for a reader to inhabit a world but short
enough to be read in one sitting. But it is much more than that. A novella tends
to focus on one view or one voice, highlights one feeling and portrays one
psychological human trait. It zooms in on one aspect of a story. It provokes us
to think and use our imagination.
The novella is – at least it should be - an intense
experience, like watching a movie.
There’s a strong resemblance between the screenplay (twenty thousand
words) and the novella. Both operate within the same constraints of economy—there’s
space for a subplot (possibly two but no more), characters are established with
quick strokes but are allowed room to live and breathe, and the central idea,
even if it is just below the horizon, always exerting its gravitational pull.
‘There’s
no room for digression. No room for passenger writing. Every word is doing a
job. So pay attention. A short novel is an event, not a trip.’ Cynan Jones
- writing for Peirene, 2016.
Author
Ian McEwan believes the novella is the superior literary form to the novel.
(2012) ‘If I could write the perfect
novella I would die happy.’ McEwan believes that brevity appeals to
readers, because ‘you can hold the whole
thing structurally in your mind at once.’
A novella is
Italian for a ‘little novelty.’ One Thousand and One Nights, written in
the 10th century, is one of the earliest examples of serialised novellas. Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales (1386-1400) could also be considered a type of novella but the
novella really came into its own in the 19th and early 20th
century - think of Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, Kafka’s Metamorphosis,
Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Henry
James, The Turn of the Screw, Ernest
Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea,
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Jean
Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea –
to name but a few.
More recent classics
include the Catalan, Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal - a
miracle of compression. In a mere 120 pages we get the complete life story of
an old woman, covering the entire 20th century.
Some of my favourite novellas are The Dig by Cynan Jones, Veronique Olmi’s
Beside the Sea, A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli, Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar, and Train
Dreams by Denis Johnson. Wioletta Grieg’s book, Swallowing Mercury might also be described as a novella – or
perhaps it’s a memoir? But that’s the fun of these books. They often defy
categories. The novella has ambivalence built into its very DNA.
Bronwen is currently attempting to write a novella
and recently completed a novella-in-flash about her childhood which was
long-listed for the Bath Novella in Flash award earlier this year. Her book of flash fiction, Not Here, Not Us – stories of Syria, was
published in 2018. She is also the author of two novels, A Bird in the House, and Here
Casts No Shadow.
With each book sold of Not Here, Not Us, Women Now - a charity which helps women in Syria and surrounding countries - receives a £1 donation
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