I have a number of short novels on my bookshelves. One of them was bought when I was a university student in Wellington, 'New Zealand's Capital of Cool', in the 1970s. The book is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, first published in 1962. The small Penguin publication is only 138 pages long. It was adapted into a terrifying film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The lead character Alex was played by Malcolm McDowell.
Set in a near-future England, the teenager Alex and his gang of friends speak in a slang, called Nadsat, made up by Burgess based on the Russian language. Alex is a complex character; a sociopath who is intelligent and quick-witted with a love for classical music, especially Beethoven. It is a dark story of the state's use of Pavlovian conditioning to alter behaviour.
Another short novel also bought in Wellington was Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was first published in the Soviet Union in 1962 and the Penguin version that I have runs into 143 pages.
It is a "spare, stark description of life in a Siberian labour camp", a fate that was shared by millions of Russians when the Soviet Union was under the dictatorship of Stalin. The book, which "shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared", led to Solzhenitsyn being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.
Love, or its darker side, can also be explored in less than 250 pages. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, first published in 1951, is an intense account of the aftermath of a love affair; my Penguin edition takes up 192 pages.
It is a story about obsessive love and is said to be based on Greene's own affair with a titled lady. Religion is also woven into the plot, a reflection of the author's Catholic faith.
Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse is 108 pages long (Penguin edition) and it was first published in 1954. When she wrote this book, Sagan was only eighteen years old and, interestingly, it is a story about a young girl's jealousy of the woman her father intends to marry and her devious plan to separate them. She succeeds but at a tragic cost.
Beauty and Sadness is another story of love and jealousy, this one written by Yasunari Kawabata. First published in 1961, it is the author's last work before he committed suicide in 1972. Kawabata was the first Japanese to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. Like Greene's book above, Beauty and Sadness, which is 152 pages long, is about a middle-aged writer and his mistress of many years earlier. There is a twist here in that the mistress of long ago, now a recluse artist, has a female protege who is also her lover.
My favourite short novel, which at 245 pages is longer than the rest mentioned here, is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. He was only six years old when his family moved to live in England in 1960 and is a British citizen. In this particular book, which came out in 1989, he delves into the professional dignity that defines an English butler, a dedication that sadly results in missed opportunities in his personal life. The character of the butler, Stevens, was brought out very well by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptation of the book, ably supported by Emma Thompson as the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, to whom Stevens just could not say the words 'I love you'.
Short novels like these are apparently not economically viable for publishers. Such books don't cost that much less than longer ones in the shops, and many customers prefer to get more book for their bucks. Which is a shame, really, because it is in short novels that you can truly see the skills of the consummate writer.
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