The Green Parrot by Marthe Bibescu

I just read this little gem of a book. It had been sitting on my bookshelf for years, and based on the “withdrawn” stamp on the first page it’s something I picked up at a library sale – and paid little attention to since. I hadn’t heard of the book or author and so had no expectations about it – the best way, I think, to approach a book or movie or any piece of art. I was surprised to read that the author was a close friend of Proust and other literary giants and was well regarded for her literary work. The edition I have is an English translation by Malcolm Cowley.

The story is told in a straightforward manner and seems, at first, a simple tale, but develops greater complexity, darkness and depth as it progresses. Narrated by a member of the Russian aristocracy living with her family in the French resort town of Biarritz in the years before and during the First World War, it is the story of a woman who lives her life without passion, having exhausted her capacity to love on a green parrot when she was eight years old. Desire, death and incest lurk in the shadows of this touching, beautifully written story.

The prose is gorgeous. This passage from the beginning of the novel will give a sense of its precision and power: “But above all, we were a family in mourning; this was our originality, the first of out titles to distinction. More than our wealth, more than the great number of children and servants, more even than the mansion built by my father between a vast garden and a private beach, our sorrow gave us a sort of superiority over the other foreign families and, as it were, a personal luster. For mourning is always brilliant; it embellishes those who wear it, and sets them forth by covering them with darkness, as night does with stars.”

I recommend this short novel to anyone who enjoys good writing. It is an easy, strangely compelling read and a very satisfying one.