Mark Bailey's Reviews > The Doll's Alphabet

An abandoned zoo, lycanthropy, an evil sewing machine, a tortoise in a pocket, a dystopian world in which factories dominate, recurring dreams of a large chest of drawers chasing a man down an endless staircase, dismembered mannequin limbs, a feminist revolution, an eerie pierrot, a nameless creature being birthed in a bath. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of The Doll's Alphabet.

This debut collection of thirteen vignettes from Camilla Grudova is beyond surreal. Inventive and immersive, unpredictable and erratic. Grotesque. Dark. It seems no amount of adjectives can do it justice. These stories are like fairytales gone wrong, in which fragmentary worlds run amok deranged and unhinged.

The opener, titled Unstitching, is a pure and elegant tale, metaphorical for female deliverance and liberation. A character known as Greta begins 'unstitching' herself - 'her clothes, skin and hair fell from her like the peeled rind of a fruit, and her true body stepped out'. Thus begins a pandemic of unstitching for women shedding their skins. It caused much debate and division between men, some lamenting 'the loss of the female form'.

The Mouse Queen sees its protagonist married to a morbid, peculiar man named Peter. After birthing twins, he abandons her and the children and struggle ensues. Herein the madness begins: she begins to transmogrify into a wolf at night, pilfering things and greedily consuming anything in her path. Then the twins vanish.

In Waxy, women work in factories of rank, and meet men in cafes to secure a relationship. It's frowned upon if you're 'manless' for too long. A true dystopian yarn, Atwood-esque and deftly written: "Take care of your man. A good lady does not let her man loiter. Feed your man well".

Agata's Machine is a desolate tale beneath its stark-mad underbelly - tainted with nostalgia and the boorish way in which life moves on. A magical sewing machine that once treadled reveals a dancing pierrot and an angel - they dance, gesture, fascinate. But its ability to captivate two young girls results in sinister ends.

The sad tale of the sconce zig-zags from one outlandish scene to another. A Mermaid and a sconce are personified as they’re transferred from an ancient ship to a museum. After bedazzling people at exhibitions, the world is ravaged by war and the mermaid is taken and used for sexual gratification by the soldiers. The sconce is then transported to an array establishments: a shop 'teeming with unclean life', a restaurant with 'peacock feathers, plastic lilies and flaking mannequin arms in vases', and to the bed of a girl with red warts all over her face.

In Hungarian Sprats, an endearing story of a wealthy son losing his luggage while on a voyage to Europe results in a genius, subtle way of protecting one's belongings: by canning them. But when the warehouse he uses to ‘can’ them has a mix-up, it results in a multitude of his items such as handkerchiefs, a dictionary, condoms, a sewing kit, underpants and a pipe being opened by unsuspecting citizens thinking they’re opening a tin of fish. Hysterical.

You really have to read these to appreciate their abject beauty. Grudova’s writing is ambitious and intense, weaving inimaginable scenes together with ferocity, and casting wonderfully grotesque, unsettling imagery. At times, Grudova’s masterful exploration of imagination is inconceivably bizarre. This collection is completely devoid of boundaries or restrictions, going beyond the unearthly: inverting it, warping it, flexing it, and in turn moulding an enchanting collection of superlative and mesmeric tales.