A huge thanks to everyone who entered our inaugural novella award. We received 173 entries from 18 different countries. We were amazed and delighted at the range and quality of the entries we received. The novella is alive and well, and the Reflex Novella Award is here to stay! Without further ado, the winners:
Winner
A Life in Chameleons by Selby Wynn Schwartz
A Life in Chameleons recounts the queer and fascinating life of Leopoldo Fregoli, an Italian quick-change artist known as ‘The Chameleon’. Fregoli is born just before cinema first jerks into motion, and he lives in constant fast-forward: this novella stages Fregoli’s story as the moving image of a life. In the opening chapters, Fregoli’s daring feats of drag entangle him with the Lumière brothers, the serpentine dancer Loïe Fuller, the duelling actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, his stage double (and lover) Romolo, and the mad Futurist F.T. Marinetti. As Fregoli changes himself into them, the narrative splices new forms together; with every jump cut, he is a new actress. But the only women in the life of Fregoli, really, are the ones he becomes himself. When women like Fregoli’s wife, Velia, begin to ask their own questions about becoming, he can offer them nothing more than empty dresses and hapless jokes. In the end, moving beyond the realm of Fregoli’s antic imitation, the novella shifts its spotlight to the women who have been upstaged by his spectacular transformations. The last chapter belongs to Velia, who reframes for herself what this life has been. Both a light waltz among the extravagant characters of early cinema and a queer feminist slant on life-writing, A Life in Chameleons is a sort of biography written in film strips.
Like nothing we’ve ever read before, we were mesmerised by A Life in Chameleons from the first reading. This fictionalised biography of Leopoldo Fregoli is not only fantastically written but impeccably researched. The story is rich in detail and historical fact, but through the skill of the writer, it never gets bogged down in those facts and remains a fun and enjoyable read. The novella zips along between major and minor events in the life of Fregoli and the people he meets. The writing is witty, peppered with humour, and thoroughly engaging. It’s short enough to read in a couple of hours – which is just as well because subsequent readings are difficult to resist – but leaves a long-lasting impression.
About the author
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Runner Up
Lovelace Flats by Jupiter Jones
Lovelace Flats is a darkly comic tale of reality and mortality set against a backdrop of dystopic urban deprivation. In 1982, the year of the Falklands War, three naive and self-absorbed students move to Lovelace Flats. The flats are very run-down and have a bad reputation, but it’s a cold winter, and underfloor heating is included in the rent – as if the flats were built directly over the firepits of hell. The neighbours are unwelcoming; they see the newcomers as an invading force, amusing themselves by ‘slumming it’. As the temperature rises and tensions simmer, Petra, Woody, and Stan are unwittingly caught up in a chain of events that connects a vigilante killing, a fatality in the South Atlantic, a foiled plot for a copy-cat murder, and an accidental death.
We loved the sense of time and place in this novella-in-flash. The clever use of newspaper headlines and events surrounding the Falklands war help anchor the story firmly in the early ’80s. While the novella is centred around the three interloping students, it is the wider cast of eclectic, larger-than-life characters and their struggles in Thatcher’s Britain that bring this novella to life. At times raw and uncompromising, this novella has human relationships at its heart – friends, neighbours, enemies in war, unwelcome visitors – all beautifully explored in this concrete jungle of Lovelace Flats, a setting so well drawn that it feels like a character in itself.
About the author
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Runner Up
At the Bottom of the Stairs by Chloe Banks
Rachel is 10 years old when a dog is rocketed into space. When she is 16, the first female astronaut orbits the earth. When she is 17, she falls in love with Tommy. But Rachel and Tommy’s love is not written in those distant stars, and they find themselves forced apart. Half a century later, when they bump into each other in a hotel bar, Rachel and Tommy are confronted with a lifetime of what-ifs. Rachel’s conformity to social expectations has brought her the joys and heartbreak of motherhood. Tommy’s marriage has given him both the recognition for his art he always craved, and a place in high society he never wanted. Is what they’ve gained apart worth as much as all they might have had together? At the Bottom of the Stairs is a story of climbing trees and female space explorers; of loving the life you didn’t lead and learning to love the one you did.
We really enjoyed the character development in this novella-in-flash. The writer moves the story backwards and forwards in time to slowly reveal the events that drive the characters’ motivations. It’s a great technique that works perfectly in a novella-in-flash where it’s possible to pull off large jumps in time and space between pieces without it feeling awkward or forced. This was the longest novella on our shortlist, yet none of those words is superfluous: they all contribute to this rich, fully-fleshed novella that has the depth and expanse of a novel.
About the author
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