Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

When the wonderful leader of my disability book group selected Little Nothing by Marisa Silver, I expected to read about the trials and tribulations of a young girl born a dwarf. Yet after the first few chapters, it became clear that Silver’s ambitions were bolder and more complex. What begins as a simple fairy tale evolves into a dark and disturbing meditation on identity. Marissa Silver’s evocative and powerful prose captured me from the first page and didn’t let me go until the last.

The story begins in some unknown country (the Czech Republic?), in some unknown time (the 20th century?). A girl is born to an elderly couple and they name her Pavla. Certain attributes about the infant are different. Since Pavla’s mother sought advice from the local witch doctor, she blames herself for her daughter’s differences and pays her infant little attention. Pavla’s father delights in Pavla from the beginning and Pavla senses it.  “…..Pavla feels, for the first time in her life, but not the last, the exquisite pain of love.”

When she fails to grow, Pavla’s parents, who have come to love her completely, are now overwrought with fear.  In their minds, Pavla’s very survival depends on her becoming a “normal” girl even though she is intelligent, insightful, and industrious. They consult a doctor in the village who advises them to pursue horrific remedies. “Neither can bear to form the words that will make a lie of what they’ve said all her life: that they love her just the way she is and that she never needs to change.” Pavla endures these horrors that include a machine built to stretch her. “Pavla wonders who they are, these people she loves, who she believed would protect her.”

I think a psychologist might say that Pavla has a dissociative experience. In order to endure these remedies, she separates her mind from her body. She transforms from a dwarf to a wolf girl to a wolf and finally to a prisoner who resembles Pavla. And instead of doubt and disbelief at this turn of events, I believe Pavla’s iterations. Though we experience Pavla in different forms, her soul, her spirit, and her essence remain consistent. And the only person that recognizes her in these different forms is Danilo, the boy who loves her but cannot commit to her.

Silver’s ambitious book comes at an important time in our history. Women’s stories must be told and believed. Silver also seeks to repudiate the healers of every generation who act on their own prejudices and fears. She also reminds us that it is often women who perpetuate the fables that denigrate, hurt, and punish other women, even those they love.

Silver’s book is an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual meditation on the often-fractured lives of women. The novel is raw and primal, and it strikes at the core of what it means to be a young woman whose identity and destiny are determined by others. Little Nothing is as much an experience as it is a novel.