cover image Childish Things

Childish Things

Valery Larbaud. Sun & Moon, $13.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-1-55713-119-5

In Larbaud's volume of short stories, translated into English for the first time, the author faithfully reproduces the inner experience of the child but does so without evoking our envy. Readers will recognize the hidden landscapes of children, created out of fantasies of romantic love, explorations, knights, queens, heroism, fame and vindication--a world jealously hidden from adults. One child says of the adults' world that ``their version is different than ours'' because it does not see a face emerging from the veins of a marble fireplace or a garden transformed into a landscape crisscrossed by trains. But, above all, the private feelings of Larbaud's children are of delicious pain. In ``Rose Lourdin'' a little girl savors being scolded, squeezes the memory of her humiliations into something sensual. ``I loved the taste of pent-up tears,'' Rose confesses, ``which seem to fall directly from your eyes into your heart.'' Although the bittersweet emotions of childhood are certainly real, the celebration of suffering does become rather tedious with children always ``hunched over and locked up under grown-up eyes.'' The strength of the book clearly lies in Larbaud's rendering of the fantasy world where adult demands for responsibility are evaded and ``the door to dreams is open night and day.'' (Apr.)