The Green Parrot

It's unfortunate that Marthe Bibesco (1886-1973) is chiefly remembered today, to the extent that she's remembered at all, as an international society lady with a long list of impressive connections. She was that, it's true, but she was also the talented author of over thirty works of fiction and non-fiction. Her biography in English, Enchantress, by Cristine Sutherland, tries to do justice to the life and career of this Romanian-born aristocrat, whose culture and literary language were from her earliest years profoundly French. Enchantress is a good introduction to a fascinating life. However, it's not until readers have sampled Bibesco's own writing that they will get a sense of how remarkable an author she really was.We can be thankful that The Green Parrot, her 1924 novel so expertly translated by Malcolm Cowley, is again in print, thanks to the Turtle Point Press. It recounts the story of a family of well-to-do Russians living in France on the eve of the First World War. The anonymous narrator, one of five daughters, tells us of her parents' marriage in Czarist Russia and how they were forced into exile because they happened to be first cousins in a time and place when such unions were considered virtually incestuous. The birth of their only son in France was taken by the pious mother as a sign from heaven that their marriage was indeed blessed. However, when the boy died of illness at the age of eight, it plunged the parents, and consequently the entire family, into deep and lasting mourning. The mother naturally took this death as a sign that heaven had ultimately judged her marriage to be sinful, and had taken her son away as punishment.In this lugubrious environment, the narrator finds no joy and little comfort. Only the sight of a beautiful green parrot in a shop window, which seems to her a promise of happiness and affection, briefly offers her a reason for hope. But when her father refuses her the chance to own the bird, claiming the creature might be harboring diseases like the one that killed his son, the girl descends into a state of emotional numbness from which she believes she will never emerge.In her late teens she weds a wealthy playboy for whom she feels no real love, in part to escape the gloomy atmosphere at home. Widowed before the age of thirty, she returns to her parents' house, and finds solace in the presence of her youngest sister, Marie, who has become almost her mirror image, physically, though more innocent and more sensitive than she. The narrator begins to take an almost maternal interest in her sister's well-being, hoping to shield her from the harsher realities that have marred her own life.While making her first visit to Russia to visit some of her father's relatives, she chances upon some long-hidden secrets relating to two of her ancestors in the previous century who are figuratively, if not literally, skeletons in the family closet. The notion dawns on her that these ancestors might, in some mysterious way, still be present in the lives, and even the bodies of both her and her sister. On her return to France, she reluctantly consults a medium, and though at first skeptical of the results, she later concludes that there is sufficient reason to believe that her life and her destiny, like those of her sister, have been irrevocably and fatally preordained. This ultimately leads to the grim conclusion of the novel, one as tragic as it is inevitable.The strength of this book lies in its rare virtues: it is unsentimental and and even-toned, though dealing with such easily sensationalized themes as incest and spiritual possession. The prose is tightly and sparely written, without verbal excess, and the style, rendered with keen appreciation by Cowley, is fluid and harmonious.This is no mere entertainment. The author's view of life and of human nature is unsparing, but persuasive. Few readers, having finished The Green Parrot, will feel anything other than admiration for the author of this splendid work.

very charming and easy reading book.