Books by Elena Arevalo Melville

Umbrella

by Will Self, Elena Arevalo Melville

“A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.”—James Joyce, Ulysses

1918
Audrey Death—feminist, socialist and munitions worker at Woolwich Arsenal—falls ill with encephalitis lethargica as the epidemic rages across Europe, killing a third of its victims and condemning a further third to living death.

1971
Under the curious eyes of psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner, assumed mental patient Audrey Death lies supine in bed above a spring grotto that she has made every one of the forty-nine years she has resided in Friern Mental Hospital.

2010
Now retired, Dr. Busner travels waywardly across North London in search of the truth about that tumultuous summer when he awoke the post-encephalitic patients under his care using a new and powerful drug.

Weaving together a dense tapestry of consciousness and lived life across an entire century, in his latest and most ambitious novel, Will Self takes up the challenge of Modernism and reveals how it—and it alone—can unravel new and unsettling truths about our world and how it came to be.

Umbrella

by Will Self, Elena Arevalo Melville

"A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella."—James Joyce, Ulysses

Radical and uncompromising, Umbrella is a tour de force from one of England’s most acclaimed contemporary writers, and Self’s most ambitious novel to date. Moving between Edwardian London and a suburban mental hospital in 1971, Umbrella exposes the twentieth century’s technological searchlight as refracted through the dark glass of a long term mental institution. While making his first tours of the hospital at which he has just begun working, maverick psychiatrist Zachary Busner notices that many of the patients exhibit a strange physical tic: rapid, precise movements that they repeat over and over. One of these patients is Audrey Dearth, an elderly woman born in the slums of West London in 1890. Audrey’s memories of a bygone Edwardian London, her lovers, involvement with early feminist and socialist movements, and, in particular, her time working in an umbrella shop, alternate with Busner’s attempts to treat her condition and bring light to her clouded world. Busner’s investigations into Audrey’s illness lead to discoveries about her family that are shocking and tragic.

Umbrella

by Will Self, Elena Arevalo Melville

Clara finds an umbrella on the ground at the park and does a good deed by putting it on a bench. The umbrella says "thank you" and invites Clara to make a wish.
So unfolds a magical chain of events featuring a new friend, an elephant, musical butterflies, and a naughty fox who learns his lesson. The artwork in this quirky piece of magical realism is packed with humor and character, and the surprising ending is both heart-warming and uplifting.

Elki Is Not My Dog

by Elena Arevalo Melville

Elki is not my dog. . . .

In fact, I don't know for sure that name is Elki. She must have had a name when we met her, but we couldn't ask her, because none of us speaks "Dog."

When an exhausted stray dog enters the lives of a small group of children, the events that follow touch the whole community.

This uplifting story by Elena Arevalo Melville, author and illustrator of the award-winning picture book Umbrella, was written for her friend and fellow illustrator Tonka Uzu, whose childhood memory this is.