Book Review: Petite Table, Sois Mise! by Anne Serre

´Elle avait eu une enfance malhereuse; elle avait besoin de folie´. 

Anne Serre writes short books. Some may include them in the category of novellas. The language is usually simple, the structure of the sentence is lacking any complexity. The intimacy of the places, of the home, of the story, is easily created in Petite table, sois mise!/Wishing Table - title inspired by a story by brothers Grimm where a table is filling automatically with fine food and wine when uttered the words ´Table, Deck Yourself!´yet misleading the reader.

Home is an intimate place - especially after two years of pandemics, even people who long for spending as much time as possible outside realized its value. Its normativity, and sense of order delineates it from the chaotic outside world. But although for the reader, the home world described - random sexual encounters between the family members, the mother who is rarely dressing and even rarely going out of the home except the two times the year for purchasing clothes - is actually the chaos, compared to the regularities and rules organising the outside world. And we are made believe that this is a beautiful world perfectly turning around the marvelous table decking itself.

But a couple of pages later, the storyteller girl leaves her family house at 15, and starts a wandering far away from home. Her oversexualized parents died meanwhile, one sister got married, we are not shared any other details about another one, she is actually empty and does not have any feelings. The opposite of one may have thought while reading the first part.

I appreciated the literary tricks we, as readers, we are trapped to believe, and the switch between make believe and what does it feel like, but the last part of the short story - less than 100 pages - is chaotic and does not tell an actual story. The brevity form is in the end turning against its own means.

Thus, I may love the techniques and some ideas, but not fully convinced by the novella in its entirety. Which will not deter me in the future to explore more writings by Anne Serre, obviously in the original.

Rating: 3 stars