Toys Are Important
Wesker had a bit of light weigh in last week and I was very upset about it. It wasn’t a huge weight loss, but after last year we’ve been extra vigilant when it comes to even small fluctuations in her weekly weigh in. This week? She’s gained what she lost and she is back to where she was on the scale. As much as I was catastrophizing, the answer was just more attention and making sure that her toys were down where she could reach them during the day.
I did not need to spend the week in dread of the scale and going forward I will try not to look for unicorns when the explanation could very well be the perfectly and easily acceptable horse looking me dead in the face.
First English Translation
It’s always exciting when a classic that has never been translated into English appears in English for the first time. It’s like reading something very new and something very old at the same time and I love that more works in translation are starting to be more readily available.
For my last Halloween in August post I am highlighting the first English translation of Marlen Haushofer’s classic novella Killing Stella. If Haushofer’s name seems familiar it’s because she’s experience a bit of resurgence after her novel The Wall became a work that many sought out during the COVID-19 pandemic. No, I haven’t quite gotten around to reading The Wall yet, but it definitely is on my wish list and I am happy that attention for that novel has led to a re-examination of her work and the translating of more of it into English.
Domestic Horror
This is maybe a book that some wouldn’t consider spooky, but I would firmly consider it a work of domestic horror. Domestic horror is a sub-genre that allows for so many subtleties and so many facets of the disturbing. The limited insular settings and interiority are the perfect backdrop for the imagination of a skilled writer — and Haushofer is one of the best.
In Killing Stella, the reader is listening to the written account of Anna, a housewife who is both deeply disturbed and deeply dissatisfied with her life. She has an unfaithful husband and children that she either obsesses over, in the case of her son Wolfgang, or is disgusted by, in the case of her daughter Annette. Add to this volatile mix, Stella, the neglected daughter of a friend that Anna takes into the household. As the narrative unfolds the reader sees just how far Anna is willing to go to keep up appearances and delude herself into thinking that life can proceed just as she feels it’s supposed to.
Subtle But Powerful
There are no ghosts here and no goblins but that doesn’t mean that the narrative isn’t powerfully disturbing and powerfully frightening. The fact that Stella’s voice is completely absent from the story, and that Anna’s view is so encompassing and cold, really drives the point Haushofer is making. Stella becomes just an object. A thing that is barely alive to the narrator. An inconvenience in her distorted world of middle-class respectability. Killing Stella is a story about monsters hiding in plain sight as well as preventable tragedies and willful blindness.
It’s important to note that Anna is definitely an unreliable narrator. Her attitudes are meant to be a critique of where society assigns blame to victims and they are not meant to truly assign guilt away from her husband for what happens to Stella.
As a warning, this novella contains allusions to the sexual abuse of a minor. Discretion is advised.
But Why the Screaming?
Why weren’t her toys accessible in the first place, I hear no one ask? Well, Wesker loves her toys and she loves carrying her toys around the house, and she absolutely loves screaming at the top of her lungs with joy while she does so. Sometimes for an hour at a time.
During the daylight hours, this is all well and good. We laugh and call back to her and usually my lovely spouse will play with her with her favourite bit of leftover ribbon. But at 2am? Not as easy to deal with. Wesker sleeps through the night as long as she isn’t presented with the temptation of playtime. So we pick up her toys at night. Last week we were too busy and stressed to remember to put them down again and Wesker clearly expressed her displeasure. I will do my best not to forget again.
