Book Review

Folk Tales from Simla:
Stories from the Himalayas
By Alice Elizabeth Dracott
1998, Hippocrene Books, Inc.
Reviewed by Olivia Kerr

My, what a peculiar little book! I'm really not sure what to make ofthis one.

I was quite interested in having a look at this, for though I've never heard of Simla (it seems it is in India somewhere,) I have, of course heard of the Himalayas, and, like so many people, have always been fascinated by that part of the world. And Dracott's book does give us an intriguing glimpse into that part of the world. We are, right from the beginning, spirited off to a very different culture and type of story. The stories are rich with references and assumptions about the culture. Unfortuantely, I think it is assumed that the audience knows these references and so doesn't need them explained. Sometimes I could figure things out from the context, but sometimes I needed a little help. The stories, which are all pretty short, are quite varied. There are tales of Kings and Queens, of great adventures, of domestic strife and family relations, of the intervention of the gods in human affairs, of everyday cleverness and of magical aid. Some are obviously simple entertainments, others teaching stories with important morals attached at the end (usually concerning fate and karma.)

But despite being short, the stories are rather difficult to follow. Very few of them fit with our Western ideas of how a story should work. Often events just happen for no apparent rhyme or reason, and people simply accept these strange turns without comment. Husbands or wives often simply wander off, and their disappearance is never commented on or even noticed by their spouses. Sometimes the missing character later wanders back into the story, but not always. Rarely do the stories come together in a Western style conclusion that ties everything up. Indeed, I was particularly intrigued by a number of stories that seem to unfold much like Western folk tales, often with very similar plots. For example, of a young man going off to seek his fortune and finding help or guidance from creatures he meets along the way. I thought I could tell where these tales were heading, but as often as not, they would start to wander off in unexpected directions, the plot threads I was following would disappear, and in the end the story turned out to be about something else all together.

Now, this all could give us an intriguing glimpse into a culture and story tradition different from our own, if only someone would tell us what it all meant or how to put the pieces together. If ever there was a book that cried out for an extensive introduction, this is it. I want to know more about these stories and their place in their culture and what that culture is. I would like to know where the stories come from. Did Dracott go out and collect them and write them down verbatim, did she rewrite and revise them after the fact, did she write them herself based on what she remembered of Simla stories? (In fact, a couple of times I found myself wondering if the strangeness of the stories was inherent in the stories, or was Dracott just a bad writer?) Like all the books in this series, Folk Tales from Simla is a reprint of an older, out-of-print collection, in this case from 1906. Now, the dust jacket of the reprint quotes an excerpt of the author's introduction from the 1906 book, but that introduction is no where to be found in the current book. I don't know why someone decided to take it out of the reprint, but that was not such a good idea and it should be put back in.

In the meantime, however, if you want to try something a little different, if you want a glimpse, however hazy it might be, of a different sort of story and culture, you might want to give Folk Tales from Simla a try.

—posted July 2002