Noelle Revaz
White ermine and other tales
Casagrande, 328 pages, 19 euros
We liked this Swiss-French writer many years ago Heart of beast (Keller) with his hard peasant background, and it would be nice to be able to read his theater. These almost always short, dry, strange stories confirm the author’s originality and skill, and also a healthy wickedness.
Here we often talk about children and adolescents, but not treated differently from adults and the old. The gaze is always hard, cold. Flashes on the eternal human immaturity, minimal and cruel stories, more situations than you tell, however of disturbing hardness, to dilate the daily life: in the Notes and in other flashes of common family and school life; in Aurisdes-Oisux, where a conductor so hate a habitual passenger that he lives only to harm him; in Spintarella he shows the cold childhood awareness of the ruthlessness of life and nature; and in When grandmother (will be dead …), where one thinks of a finally better future, the old disappeared and freed from the perenniality of evil and immaturity.
Other stories seem like cold photos, where a slightest movement reveals a decisive and irremediable condemnation. In Maurizia Balmelli’s perfect translation, Revaz confirms herself as a pupil and heir of the great writers and experimenters of yesterday, teachers or children of
.