A Good Year
A novella by Polis Loizou
The twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany are rich in folkloric associations, and traditionally held to be a period imbued with magic, a time when ghosts and spirits roam. Urs Faes exploited the Alpine customs associated with “Twelvetide” in his Twelve Nights, a novella in which the season’s evil spirits are used a metaphor for the pain which humans can inflict on each other. The twelve days of Christmas also provide the setting for A Good Year, a forthcoming novella in the Fairlight Moderns series written by UK-based Cypriot author Polis Loizou.
Loizou’s work is set in his
native Cyprus in 1925, then under British occupation and soon to become a Crown
colony. Despo, recently married and heavily pregnant, hopes that her baby will arrive
after Epiphany. The feast will bring to an end the dark period after Christmas.
Whoever is born in the shadowy time of year between Christmas and Epiphany can
fall prey to the kalikantzari, malevolent hairy goblins with
donkey’s feet. Despo prays that she will have a healthy baby and that she will manage
to keep him safe from the fearsome creatures which wander around during the
black winter nights.
In the meantime, Despo’s husband Loukas is facing fears of a different nature, as much to his surprise, guilt and shame, he finds himself irresistibly attracted to an Englishman who has just settled in the village.
Fairlight Books has introduced
us to some great authors and I feel that with Loizou and his novella they
have discovered another winner. A Good Year is written in a simple, yet poetic
prose, one rich with the hues, flavours and traditions of a rural Mediterranean
village. Although set in 1925, many of
the descriptions evoke a timeless, ancient landscape. Just by way of comparison, the atmosphere of
this novella is not unlike Narine Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell from the Sky. It inhabits the same magical realist world,
at once rooted in a historical reality and coloured by myth, legends and
traditions.
If I have a quibble about A Good Year, it is that, much as I like the novella as a form, I think that there is a lot going on in this particular work, and it might have needed the breathing space which only a longer format can allow. At the heart of A Good Year is a poignant tale about an outsider, a man who is discovering himself and his sexuality, and the psychological battle which he goes through as he accepts this aspect of his personality. But Despo’s perspective is equally interesting, and one about which ultimately we do not get much closure. This novella also has strong Gothic overtones, its folk horror element never discounted as purely metaphorical. The historical context also provides the occasion for the author to obliquely comment on the colonial experience. I found this aspect particularly interesting as a Maltese reader, even though it was not developed in any great detail.
A Good Year left me wanting more, but in a
positive way. It is a novella I certainly recommend,
while looking forward to Loizou’s future work.
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