Sheila Fischman has undertaken an ambitious task in translating Christine Eddie’s short novel, The Douglas Notebooks, into English. The original French text, Les Carnets de Douglas, won the 2008 Prix France-Quebec and the 2009 Prix Senghor du Premier Roman Francophone. Fischman has taken care to retain the French flavour of Eddie’s fable, a gentle touch that contributes to its rich textures.

Staying true to the fable’s mode of concise storytelling, the novel quickly sketches its fairy-tale setting, presenting readers with a forest waking after winter and a village the size of “a mere comma.” Whimsical imagery moves the story forward and establishes the woods as a de facto character.

We meet Romain, a young man born into a wealthy family who neglect and disdain him. At 18, he flees home to live in the forest, where he develops keen survival skills and reinvents himself as a wild man. It’s a promising premise, but Romain’s transition from rich kid to recluse feels thin and rushed, creating a disconnect for the reader.

The story soon takes on aspects of a melancholy romance. Éléna, a young woman with a tragic history, becomes infatuated with Romain. Though he is reluctant to let someone else into his solitary life, Romain eventually accepts Éléna, and even lets her rename him Douglas Starling. Although the story hinges on the relationship between the two leads, the secondary characters Gabrielle Schmulewitz and Léandre Patenaude provide some of the more fascinating moments. Their lonely lives feel more consistently realized than those of the protagonists.

The Douglas Notebooks stays true to the succinct form of a fable, but the story moves so briskly that at times it feels slight. It reads like a folk tale handed down from one generation to the next, in which certain details have been glossed over or forgotten; the reader often longs for greater development. Still, the imagery is so crisp, and the travails of the forest and its inhabitants so heartbreaking, that what is on the page is hard to forget.