Līga Horgana is back with another literature review, this time a compilation of short stories by Daina Tabūna translated into English.
The Secret Box is available from The Emma Press here.
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| Image Credit: The Emma Press |
The Secret Box, a compilation of three short stories written by Daina Tabūna, translated by
Jayde Will and illustrated by Mark Andrew Webber, was published in 2017 in the UK by
The Emma Press. The book is about
girls and their way through the process of growing up. According to Tabūna, it is important to write about women because literature and cinema are still dominated by stories about men.[1] Feminist ideas prevail throughout this book.
While
the first story "Deals with God" tells
about an eight-year-old girl who slowly builds a relationship with Jesus and
tries to live according to his teachings in a quite non-religious family and
society in general, the two others focus more on the differences between men and women and their
relationships. My favorite one, called "The Secret Box," was about two siblings: a brother and a younger
sister who had absolutely nothing in common, representing society's
expectations for boys and girls.
"To be honest, I hadn’t had anything
in common with Edgars for a long time. I don’t remember us making any little
conspiratorial plans or getting up to any mischief together until that secret
box of ours. A few times Edgars had tried, in a rather brutal way, to get me
involved in his games, especially before he started school and got to know the
boys from the neighbouring apartment blocks. But I was afraid of climbing
trees, balls, throwing and catching things, water, fire, bugs, blood, dirty
hands, even swings and bikes."[2]
However,
despite their differences, they build a close relationship by creating their own
game with dolls that still has to be kept in secret — first of all, because they
are already teenagers who are not meant to be playing, and second of all they
have to adhere to their gender roles so a boy cannot do such girly things and get
away with that. The last story, called "The Spleen, My Favorite Organ," is about a university student who builds a relationship with a man in order to escape some hollowness in her own life.
The
stories don’t seek to solve any existential questions or show some big, great
characters. They tell about simple life and small decisions made by people who
do not have a captivity to change a lot. The author says, “I was interested in writing about the small moments of breakthrough — that may seem like small events from the side, but they serve as important
turning events in their personal biographies. It may be stepping off a tram at
a station where you've never been, throwing away your childhood toys or making
a long delayed phone call.”[3]
For me it left a very personal impression. At some points it almost felt
like reading someone’s diary. Little secrets, uncertainty and doubts that are
not meant to be known by others. Nothing big, nothing dramatic but very intimate.
Another
thing I could mention in speaking about this book is the voice of the main
characters. They all are different girls at different ages and with different family
backgrounds, but I agree with all those other readers who have claimed that the
impression left after reading the stories is that it seems to be the same girl at various stages of her life. For me personally, it took quite a while to accept
that the girl in "The Secret Box" is
not the same one as in "Deals with God," although
it was quite obvious already from the very first paragraphs. They both seemed
to have a very similar worldview and a way of telling the story. I don’t
want to make conclusions about whether it is good or bad, but for me as a person who is usually not a fan of short stories, it made it easier to read the book because when starting
a new story I was already able to assume that I knew the main character from the
previous one. For other readers, however, I can imagine that this could be boring.
For those of you who can read in Latvian, I
would suggest reading the book Pirmā reize (The First Time) by Daina Tabūna. It is the author’s first book, and was
published in 2014. It got nominated for the Annual Latvian Literary Award for the
best debut. This Latvian editions includes not only the three stories that I already have mentioned, but also four
more short stories that conceptually focus on young women. The book develops the idea
of the difficult process of growing up, showing how the ideals of youth are crushed by
facing adult life and accepting that a normal job, family life and daily
routine are good and advisable parts of the life. Or maybe it leaves the question
open about whether it is really worth leaving behind the bohemian or wandering around the world in order to have a normal life?
In any case, either edition of Daina Tabūna’s book will
be good literature for those who are not looking for dramatic plots and
heroes but are willing to enjoy some ordinary everyday situations, maybe to
recall some younger years or identify with their own current life reality.
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