A Month of Novellas, Book 2: The Book of Words - Jenny Erpenbeck (2004)

at the morgan library and museum in nyc

Yowza.

'The Book of Words' might be a tiny book but it certainly packs a gigantic punch within its' 79 pages.

First off, it's not for the faint of heart as its' final pages read like a how to guide for evil.

It read to me much like a stream of consciousness story, often going off on tangents, and using repetition, well, repeatedly, almost daring the reader to say it out loud like a piece of spoken word poetry with all its' rhythmic grooves.

It wasn't perfect, if such a thing can be invoked from a book. I found myself frustrated by some of the repetition at times, like with an old relation who's telling the same story for the hundredth time.

And I was forever lost as to whom was speaking. It was the young girl...but how old was she? Was she telling us her story with the words from her childhood or was she remembering as an adult, inserting her hindsight into the memories?

At times she seemed to be 6, and then suddenly she was turning 17. The only indication that there was a passage of time was the accumulation of ghosts within her periphery. More and more people would disappear and then reappear as transparent creatures in her home.

But in the end, the imagery was everything and it was breathtaking:
"A miracle, my mother says and points at two black-clad, billowing angels, who hand in hand far off in the distance, are plummeting from the sky above the ocean, the sky is blue, utterly blue, just as blue as the water in which it is mirrored, the angels are plunging from blue to blue, from sky to water, plunging black against the blue with their arms spread wide, holding one another's hands, my mother and I are standing down below at the harbor observing this miracle, and many other people are standing there as well, pointing at the angels and crossing themselves." pp. 16

This story is riddled with hand-less children, trampling horses, shots that seem to be perfectly timed to go off during school recess, markets on train tracks, torture horrors.

And through it all, we listen to a little girl's inner thoughts, trying to make sense out of a completely senseless world where everyone either lies or goes away.

I picked up this book on a lark during a long ago forgotten shopping expedition. And then picked it up again on a lark to be one of my month of novellas selection. It was written by a woman and it was less than 150 pages - it fit the criteria. I'm ever so glad that all of those little larks came together to enable me to read Jenny Erpenbeck's slim little book of words.