This set-up is a frame for Falkner to explore themes of women’s agency and friendship, grief, and compassion. Wouldn’t you know it, both of them end up stashed in New Place. An ambush on the royal carriage has left a boy from the rebel party injured by musket fire, and Queen Henrietta Maria has gone into hiding. In the summer of 1643, the Bard’s daughter, Susanna Hall, is embroiled in tensions between the monarchy and Parliament. Both books concern illness, loyalty, and death as rendered in a particular historical moment.įor Falkner, the scene is New Place, the Shakespeare family home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Jennifer Falkner’s Susanna Hall, Her Book arrives from Fish Gotta Swim Editions, whose mission is to publish novellas that are “a pleasure to read and to hold.” Based jointly in British Columbia and the Netherlands, the venture specializes in books that are otherwise ignored -“because publishers are convinced they aren’t popular enough to invest in.” Naben Ruthnum’s Helpmeet, from the indie press Undertow Publications, has already garnered praise in Canada and the United States for its mix of period detail and body horror. Two scrappy small presses have recent books that display the form’s limitations and possibilities. As a result, novellas don’t typically win literary awards or appear on bestseller lists.ĭespite this low profile (and because writers and readers often like things that most publishers don’t), the novella endures, flourishing in the scrub. Not many people have marketed one, and few know how to do so effectively. Whereas both the short story and the novel are widely known forms with accompanying expectations, the novella isn’t as familiar.
The literary equivalent of a tight half-hour of prestige TV, the novella - a complete work of prose fiction between 15,000 and 40,000 words, give or take - doesn’t get the love it deserves from contemporary publishing. This seems to be an ideal time for the novella to take a turn in the spotlight. Brevity is no longer the soul of wit so much as the tiny window through which wit must leap, often to its death. Driven by digital communications, dominant forms of media are getting shorter. The average YouTube video is, according to the Pew Research Center, twelve minutes long meanwhile, the average retention rate fluctuates around 50 percent - meaning six minutes is a sweet spot for our hacked attention spans.
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