By Pierre Furlan
VUP, NZ$25 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

PIERRE FURLAN, the 2004-2005 French writer in residence at Wellington’s Randell Cottage, is a new and welcome addition to Victoria University Press’s stable. Bluebeard’s Workshop is not Furlan’s first book or first connection with New Zealand (he’s the author five works of fiction, and has translated, amongst many others, Elizabeth Knox and Alan Duff) and, by the sounds of it, will not be his last. At the Auckland Writers’ and Readers’ Festival, Furlan sang the praises of the translator of this collection, Victoria University’s senior lecturer in French, Jean Anderson, comparing the difficulty of finding a sensitive translator to delicate matter of finding a compatible spouse. He is currently finishing a novel set in New Zealand, which will no doubt be entrusted to Anderson.

Even without having read the French version of Bluebeard’s Workshop (L’Atelier de Barbe-Bleue), it’s possible to see why Furlan was so pleased with Anderson’s translation. Without sacrificing the rather European atmosphere of the stories, and the distinctive voices of the narrators, Anderson has turned the French into a controlled, lyrical yet casual New Zealand English. Furlan’s style has been compared to Raymond Carver’s, and, although not as pared back and laconic, his stories do have a matter-of-fact irony in the way the way that they deal with their subject, which is, in most cases, love and loneliness. Don’t imagine stereotypically attractive French couples wandering naked around Parisian apartments eating pain-au-chocolat; like Carver, again, Furlan deals with messier relationships. The title story is a good example of the way in which Furlan begins with a simple relationship and zooms in until the narrator’s jealousy, disillusionment and possessiveness become the focus. This is done in a casual way – none of Furlan’s stories begin as doctrines for human behaviour, there is always a sufficiently robust reason driving the idea. A young woman is sent notes on a string from an old woman in the apartment across the road; a man is given a manuscript of a novel which he’s sure is being played out in reality; a woman morphs into a truck after toying with immortality. “She stepped on the gas, made her eyes shine brightly, rubbed her breasts until they lit up the way and started off with a jolt.” This is an instance of Furlan’s uninhibitedly weird sense of humour and gravity, which is employed in each of his stories.

Furlan’s characters range from scientific researchers to translators, from boxers to writers, but all are, as fictional characters tend to be, on the brink of finding an answer to some emotional confusion. This is a strong situation for short stories to be structured around, and in the case of Furlan’s work, is dealt with in such a variety of ways that it doesn’t become too stale. My favourite story of the collection, ‘Paekakariki’, is addressed, in the second person, to the narrator’s dead father – a mode of narration which could go horribly wrong. Fortunately Furlan’s decision to mediate the narrator’s memories through the vividly rendered setting gives the story a tone of quiet preoccupation rather than simply bitter nostalgia. The weight of the subject is substantial but never allowed to lapse into cliché, which could well be said of many of the stories in this collection. All begin deceptively easily, gain weight and often crescendo in the final paragraph. The mistake I made during my first reading of this collection was not pausing for breath and reflection between stories. This is not a book to be sprinted though.