Recent animals

In the most enigmatic of Robert Musil’s stories, The Blackbird, the narrator says: “I just want to tell you my stories to find out if they ring true.” The same may be said of the stories in this book. Each narrative is about autobiographical episodes it would have been wiser to leave unsaid. In her quest to reveal the most hidden of threads, with unyielding resolve Isabella Ducrot crosses the sharp-edged boundaries of modesty, whether it be an account of a banquet she organizes for poor children at her home using inferior ingredients, blending cocoa with water, or the many snapshots of a life lived under the shadow of absence, knowledge and meaning. The narrator’s perspective on these fragments of memory is often filled with uncertainty and doubt, yet the shame of staying silent would have been even more intolerable.