Novella idea - Glenfarron by Jonathan Falla

Published on Thursday 31 July 2008 13:15

MALCOLM LOWRY ONCE SUGGESTED, in a letter to that fine short-story writer James Stern, that "it is possible to compose a satisfactory work of art by the simple process of writing a series of good short stories, complete in themselves, with the same characters, interrelated, correlated, good if held up to the light, watertight if held upside down, but full of effects and dissonances that are impossible in a short story, but nevertheless having its purity of form."

I like that "simple process", especially coming from Lowry, a genius in his way, who found everything difficult, except writing letters several thousand words long, explaining why he couldn't finish this book or that.

The "simple process" is not exactly what Jonathan Falla has attempted, if only because Glenfarron is made up of three novellas, rather than, say, the dozen or so short stories Lowry may have been thinking of. But in other respects his book satisfies Lowry's criteria. Each novella is complete in itself. Some characters move from one to another. The setting, Glenfarron, somewhere in the Highlands, with a river running down to the Moray Firth, provides unity. The stories are related, and play nicely off each other, and there are these "effects and dissonances" which Lowry spoke of and which are, as he said, "impossible in a short story".

It's an intelligent, well-written, ambitious and often moving book, and, if it isn't a complete success, it's because the third novella is not only very different in tone from the first two, but also inferior to them. It's enjoyable enough, but this tale of how an old Africa hand returns to Glenfarron, inspires the local youth and schoolchildren with enthusiasm for a persecuted African tribe, establishes a museum of Africana, and comes into conflict with the Foreign Office and the Embassy of the African State now governed by the persecutors, is enjoyable in the way that Compton Mackenzie's Highland farces were enjoyable. Indeed it resembles them in its delight in exaggeration teetering into absurdity.

The first two novellas are of a very different order and quality. The first is set during the Second World War and tells of the impact made by a group of Polish airmen based in a local Big House turned convalescent hospital.

The most charismatic of them, a fighter-pilot hero of the Battle of Britain, falls in love with a nurse, whom he has previously met when she visited her sister in Glasgow. The sister has a child by another Polish airman, and this child, Charlie, will appear as a grown man and the local doctor in the succeeding novellas. The nurse is married to a game-keeper, understandably jealous of the pilot and resentful of the Poles. As the war ends and men begin to return to the jobs they had before the war, resentment of the Poles intensifies. Tragedy beckons.

This is all very well done, Falla showing empathy with all his characters and an understanding of the social tensions occasioned by the advent of incomers.

The second novella is more narrowly focused. A young couple from Glasgow inherit a house from a great-uncle, whose family have lived in the glen for generations. The girl becomes obsessed with a nasty episode in the distant past, also with a disused camera obscura in the tower room of their house, which her partner, Paul, is repairing. Her obsession is disturbing. The doctor believes she should see a psychiatrist, but both the young people are hostile to the suggestion, for reasons which become apparent only as the story unravels. There's a Gothic element to this novella, a touch of the macabre, and, once again, one is aware of impending tragedy.

The stories are well-anchored by Falla's sense of place and his understanding of the changing rhythms of life in the glen. Indeed Glenfarron is itself the chief character, and Falla's ability to evoke changes in land use and society is very impressive, all the more so because he is able to show how the past survives and colours both the present and the future. He writes well and vividly, and is no longer to be described as a promising novelist, but as an accomplished one. Glenfarron is a real achievement.

GLENFARRON BY JONATHAN FALLA Two Ravens Press, 246pp, 9.99