Trunt, trunt
In A. S. Byatt’s Little Black Book of Stories there is one about a woman who turns into an beautiful and bewildering assembly of stones. Naturally she ends up in Iceland, where the stones are still very much alive. Talking to her Icelandic sculptor friend shortly before her final transformation, he tells her the story of a man who abandons his friends to live wild amongst the rocks. Each year for three years they visit him to see if he’s willing to return to them, and each time they ask what he believes in. The final time he responds, laughing “Trunt, trunt, og tröllin à fjöllunum,”
“‘Trunt, trunt’ is just nonsense, it means rubbish and junk and aha and hubble bubble, that sort of thing, I don’t know an English expression that will do as a translation. Trunt trunt, and the trolls in the fells.”
Ever since I finished the story, trunt has been rolling around inside my head. I love the idea of a word that is so chock-full of nothing.
I went out and found a copy, as I respect your reading choices. It was fantastic, each story was excellent. I have a soft spot for the first one, which is quite Angela Carter esque. And the stone woman story is also superb. I haven’t read anything by her, so would you say her novels are as good, or her other short stories as wonderfully written?
I gave my copy away, while working in the Oxfam bookshop, to a rather lovely mature Canadian woman. Spreading the pleasure.
Yes, the first story is very Carter-esque. I read “The Bloody Chamber” only quite recently. My favourite in the “Little Black Book…” is “Body Art.”
You haven’t read any of Byatt’s other work? OK, then you have to read “Possession.” I’m quite fond of “Angels & Insects” too. Something else by Byatt bored Courtney’s Atwood book group (they’re exhausted all the Atwood there is) so maybe she’s not as entertaining as I think she is.
What else have I read? Oh, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” is pretty good. It’s a novella and a selection of short stories, some of which are stories written by characters in “Possession.”