A review by octavia_cade
The Doll: A Portrait of My Mother by Ismail Kadare

reflective medium-paced

4.0

This novella is a great deal more than it seems. Ostensibly it's a portrait of the author's mother, who married at seventeen and never really advanced emotionally or intellectually beyond that age, shut up as she was in the marital home. She's so consistently naive, so eternally fragile, that Kadare refers to her as The Doll, as if she's a paper cut-out almost entirely lacking in reality or substance. As the book goes on and Kadare recounts his success as a writer, The Doll begins to worry that she is herself unsuitable to be the mother of such an artist, and wonders if he will replace her. This seems a rather odd fear, even for such a strange woman, but it gradually becomes clear that The Doll, and the overpowering house in which she lives, is as much metaphor as woman, and what Kadare is instead (also) exploring is his relationship with Albania and how creativity can impact on one's relationship with the country and community of one's birth.

It's very cleverly done, and I want a copy of my own. I'm also, it has to be admitted, deeply curious as to how much of The Doll comes from a real person, and how much is constructed or exaggerated in the service of metaphor. She's so very sheltered and so very odd that it's tempting to want to poke her to see if her flesh tears, or if she can be folded up into small pieces and stowed away somewhere.