Overview

On the cusp of womanhood, Daina Tabūna's heroines are constantly confronted with the unexpected. Adult life seems just around the corner, but so are the kinds of surprise encounter which might change everything. Two siblings realise they're too old to be playing with paper dolls. A girl develops a fixation with Jesus. And a disaffected young woman stumbles into an awkward relationship with an office worker. The narrators of these three stories each try, in their own way, to make sense of how to behave in a world that doesn't give any clear answers.

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9781910139905

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Reviews

"A quote that I absolutely loved from this story was ""Without warning, the time had arrived where it wasn't our dolls that had to be beautiful and sexy, but us ourselves"". To me this perfectly sums up what the transition to becoming a teenager is like for a young girl. I commend Daina for highlighting this issue and for showing what society expects from women, even from a young age. Author Daina Tabūna (born in Riga, Latvia in 1985) has an innate skill in communicating voice to the reader. All three stories in The Secret Box seem to spring from some truth or experience in the author's life, from which she spins out a narrative with a viewpoint that is seamlessly consistent and vibrantly alive.'"

Author Daina Tabūna (born in Riga, Latvia in 1985) has an innate skill in communicating voice to the reader. All three stories in The Secret Box seem to spring from some truth or experience in the author’s life, from which she spins out a narrative with a viewpoint that is seamlessly consistent and vibrantly alive.' -- Jo Manby * Mslexia Max * A quote that I absolutely loved from this story was “Without warning, the time had arrived where it wasn’t our dolls that had to be beautiful and sexy, but us ourselves”. To me this perfectly sums up what the transition to becoming a teenager is like for a young girl. I commend Daina for highlighting this issue and for showing what society expects from women, even from a young age. -- Marie Humble * Cuckoo Review *

Author Information

Daina Tabūna (1985) is a prose writer. Daina Tabūna's short story collection Pirmā reize (The first time) was nominated for the Annual Latvian Literary Award 2014 as the best debut of the year. Pirmā reize immediately won over many readers and critics and has become a cult book of its time in Latvia. In 2010 Daina Tabūna completed her studies with a BA in Theatre, cinema and TV drama at the Latvian Academy of Culture. Her professional experience includes writing for a television soap opera, leading a photography club for 10-year-old Bulgarians, managing public relations for a closed museum, and extended periods of unemployment. She is passionate about hiking and being silly. Jayde Will (1978) is a literary translator. He has an M.A. in Fenno-Ugric Linguistics from Tartu University. His translations of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian authors have been published in numerous journals, including Poetry Review, Trafika and Mantis, as well as anthologies such as the Dedalus Book of Lithuanian Literature and several Best European Fiction anthologies. He has also translated subtitles for numerous films, including the Lithuanian classic The Devil’s Bride and the award-winning Vanishing Waves. Artist-printmaker Mark Andrew Webber specialises in painstakingly-researched typographic and geometric projects, including his ‘Where in the World’ series of enormous city maps and ‘FORM’, a six-part study of line and form. In 2007, Webber was awarded a Silver Cube award from the Art Directors Club of New York. His first solo exhibition, ‘Wonderlust’, was on display at the Londonewcastle Project Space in London in 2014. He collaborated with poet Jacqueline Saphra on her pamphlet If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (Emma Press, 2014), illustrating her poems with linocuts inspired by his lifedrawing sketches. He is based in Reading.

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