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A brief whim in 2021 and 2022 to write 10 short novellas. It had to do with Corona.
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This is the first in a series of short novellas I began writing in the fall of 2021. The trigger was simple: I was spending some time in Chartres studying the cathedral and the old town, and one day I was sitting on a low wall along a path beside the Eure River when I saw a golden retriever walking by without a human. The rest was writing down what unfolded.
A young artist made the drawing.
I wrote about 10 novellas in a short period of time, which are presented below.
In 2023, I translated them into English and some into French. No, not all of them, One is so full of puns that it's untranslatable.
This is my second short novella. Cycling.
How did you come up with that? I often wonder about that. I'm not really into cycling and I don't have ADHD. I might be a little autistic...
Apparently, it's not difficult for me to invent a character, two in this case, and develop them. Let them develop, actually; it's almost an autonomous process, I just have to write it down.
But the theme is clear: lonely people, loners, who encounter something precious. A dog, another lonely person. A child, like Dicky.
This is my third short novella: A Man and a Horse.
These novellas came to me without interruption, as if I had opened a box of presents.
The usual story: a man alone meets a cat, dog, woman, or in this case an old vegetable cart horse, and forms a bond with it. Actually, it's always on the initiative of the other. The other needs him. In order to continue living.
That appeal sets the man in motion, both physically and emotionally. Together, they are no longer lonely. The man does his best for the other and tackles problems; his inertia, his frozen state is thawed by his own fire.
Beautiful to see.
The drawing was again made by Emma Bimek.
This is already the fourth in a row.
Dicky is about an 8-year-old runaway girl and a lonely man who shares his bread with her.
The theme sparked quite a bit of creativity in me. It was Corona time (2021) and isolation was rampant worldwide.
That makes you think about connection. About how you can bridge a distance of five feet with love and care. What it's like when a vulnerable being finds protection with you.
That feels grand.
When it comes to an abrupt end, the abyss is unfathomably deep.
Oldtimers. Old cars and old people.
An early retired municipal worker becomes a volunteer on an estate.
The relationship between him and the equally lonely owner quickly becomes that of farmer and farmhand. This is so deeply ingrained, especially in him, that he is greatly surprised when he feels sad as she is driven away in an ambulance for good.
He still has the old Oldsmobile in his shed and restores it until he can occasionally drive it on the dead-end road. In memory.
A place where a person can live independently; that has long been an almost desperate wish of mine. That independence came when I received my state pension, and instead of one place, I now have two.
Only then was I able to distance myself from it and write A courtyard full of finds. About a much younger man, depressed but stubborn, with a big heart in which his disabled son lived.
His simmering anger over his ex-wife's alleged negligence, which almost cost their son his life, eventually evaporates when they meet a woman whom his son immediately recognizes as...
No, read that for yourself in the book.
I haven't translated all of my novellas.
But three of them, which are a kind of series, I have bundled into one volume and translated it into Englih and French:
Reducing the ecological footprint.
I only realized they form a continuous story when I started the second novella, which features the same main characters: two pensioners, Franco and Emil.
Emil, a writer, painter, vagabond, and mystic, also appears in the Odile series from 2026. As a writer, I simply had to make more use of such a precious, omniscient, and enigmatic character.
Here we follow a group of people who, in consultation with residents, both human and non-human, devise and implement a plan to mitigate extreme drought and extreme flooding.
Refugium, the second in this series, was written at the request of a friend, Luc Sala, who has since passed away. The location really exists; we have been there. The project did not go ahead at the time. However, we did not consider a state of siege impossible during the coronavirus pandemic.
It is an ode to solidarity, inventiveness, and nonviolent resilience. And to the ingenuity of refugee children.
Rural wisdom, the third in this series, was written out of indignation that so little attention is paid to the ingenuity with which many farmers manage their land and manage to earn a living from it.
The fuss with which the big earners—and environmental polluters—constantly monopolize attention is shocking. There are many more independent and independently minded farmers who, with their professional knowledge, common sense, and mutual solidarity, are achieving a quiet transition.
Perhaps it is better that they remain in the background.
In the English translation I arrived at the title you see next.
The novel had by the translation into English evolved, as it were, to a story of love, self-reliance and respect.
The main character is derived from my personal never-accomplished-desires. In this case a premature pensioned and very disappointed sea captain. He decides to quit society – a onshore society – completely. Since he knows the caretaker of a National Reserve, he gets access to a unhabited piece of the country.
He succeeds to organize a utterly private existence for himself.
The small river is not a boundary: it is a connection to the world.
People find him there. He starts to meet people: man, women, children, who fit in his existence.
