The Doll's Alphabet has eleven letters:The Doll's Alphabet is a strange, surrealist collection of stories that consistently had me wondering, “What did I just read? What does it mean?” That quote above is the entirety of the titular story: And. What. Does. That. Mean? Does it mean anything? I don't know if that particular “story”, and author Camilla Grudova's decision to name the collection after it, is meant to warn the reader off of trying to parse a deeper meaning in these tales, but like time-tested fables, these stories feel deep; they clicked for me beyond my conscious mind, leaving me puzzled but somehow satisfied. Channelling Grimm by way of Gogol, Grudova layers on some Atwoodesque social commentary and it all works.
ABCDILMNOPU
This collection has thirteen stories, ranging in length from the two sentences above to one story that is twenty-six pages, and they are all set in a world of scarcity (think a cross between Communist bread lines and some post-apocalyptic future) with grime, shabbiness, and folks living on tea, tubers, and tinned fishes; this is our world but not, familiar but strange. (If I had a complaint it would be that for a collection of fantastical tales, despite different social structures and apparently different settings in each story, they all seem to inhabit the same world; there's also a sameness of voice and style that could have been shaken up.) And these are decidedly feminist stories, with surrealist situations underscoring gender roles – pregnancy and childbirth are often dodgy propositions; even mermaids risk molestation. Themes and ideas recur throughout, but no image moreso than that of an old-fashioned sewing machine; and what does that mean? In the first story, Unstitching, women discover how to reveal their inner selves (to the disgust and envy of their male partners):
One afternoon, after finishing a cup of coffee in her living room, Greta discovered how to unstitch herself. Her clothes, skin, and hair fell from her like the peeled rind of a fruit, and her true body stepped out...She did not so much resemble a sewing machine as she was the ideal form on which a sewing machine was based. The closest thing in nature she resembled was an ant.In Agata's Machine, a reclusive young genius transforms a sewing machine into a magic lantern that projects a moving image of her dream man, and in Edward, Do Not Pamper the Dead, a man undermines his wife's efforts to save up for a sewing machine of her own:
He had dreamt of the sewing machine many times; he was convinced Bernadette and the machine would somehow become one being, a silver needle coming out of Bernadette's mouth where her teeth should have been. In his dreams, he lay flat on her lap, and she sewed his hands to his feet and so forth. Her neck bent, her face almost touching her thighs, but for Edward in-between.In Waxy, in a society where Men study Philosophy Books in order to take Exams while supported by their women who work in Factories, a young woman works at a sewing machine factory (painting “NIGHTINGALE” on each machine by hand), and in the final, perhaps strangest story, Notes from a Spider, a celebrated man with a handsome, human face and the body of an arachnid finally finds his equal in an unexpected place:
The machine in the window had four legs, like iron plants, a wooden body, a swan-like curved metal neck and a circular platform to run the fabric across, not unlike the plate on a gramophone where the record was placed, and a small mouth with one silver tooth. She was an unusual, modern creature. What beautiful music she must make! Florence was her name, it was stencilled on the shop window. FLORENCE. I sat there in my carriage until it was morning and the shop opened. I hastily purchased her, the one in the window. They asked if I wanted her taken apart, for carrying, but I had her put, as is, in my carriage. I drove through the city, my legs entwined with hers, two of my feet placed on her sole-shaped pedals.I don't know what any of it means, but I liked it. A lot.
