I originally picked up the book because I loved Life of Pi. I read it for the first time when still in High school, which feels like eons ago. It is one of the few books I read several (more than twice, less than twenty) times. Sometimes when I feel like I'm going to go nuts, I like to read it in the bathtub. Martel's tone matches the feeling of floating in water and it is altogether a spiritual experience.
While I did not find Beatrice & Virgil as physically affecting, it was imaginative, expressive and touching. There are 2 main characters, both named Henry. Henry no. 1 is an author who is a very thinly veiled copy of Yann Martel himself. He responds to a request for help from Henry no. 2 who is writing a dramatic, allegorical piece called Beatrice and Virgil. In the play, Beatrice is a donkey and Virgil is a Howler Monkey (and yes, they are a reference to The Divine Comedy). And so, the scene is set for a story, full of self-realization and philosophical rambling. I won't ruin it, but there is quite a twist at the end. I should have seen it coming, but I missed the signs. Looking back, they're definitely there. Read closely.
Yann is a master of dialogue. There are two levels of dialogue in the book. The first is the dialogue between the two Henrys. They don't really like each other, but they seem to feed off one another as creators. There is also the dialogue between Beatrice and Virgil. As their story is written as a play, their entire characters are created by dialogue. Beckett and Diderot are cited as being similar the play: no action, lots of talking. These two have an almost Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel to them. Beatrice and Virgil also exist outside the book, in the as taxidermy animals in Henry no. 2's shop. The howler monkey sits on the donkey's back, just like in the play. It's a taxidermy shop so they've been stuffed and posed. As Henry no. 1 puts it, the shop is "a room full of adjectives, like a Victorian novel". Add to that a miscellany of other exotic animals placed in realistic poses in perfectly recreated and dimly lit scenes of their natural habitat. Spooky, and kind of unnerving in my eyes.
The story slowly peels back the onion of a story that is Beatrice and Virgil, mostly narrated by the old, somber and very eccentric Henry no. 2. Overall, I thought the book was a very easy read that leaps between bizarre situations, stitching them seamlessly together through a pastiche of rhyme and reason. It is an elegant, and at the same time oddly awkward story, probably because it is so personal in nature.
Spoiler Alert (not really, but some people don't like to know things that happen late in the book...): There was one oddly visceral and moving scene was one that will stick in my mind for a long time. Throughout the story, Henry no. 1 grows close to his two animals, whom he and his wife adopt when the move to the new City at the beginning of the book. There is a cat named Mendelssohn and a dog named Erasmus. You get to know Erasmus a little better, because Henry no. 1 uses walking the dog as an excuse to head over to Henry no. 2's bizarre little taxidermy shop to work on the play. Anyway, they die, suddenly and gruesomely. Henry no. 1 has to put them down. Erasmus gets rabies and mauls Mendelssohn, breaking his back and puncturing his back legs. Both of them have to go. I was flitting through the book, wondering where all this monkey description and looking for food was going and then BAM! It made my stomach drop. The next few pages seemed hollow. I had to take a break. It seems to stick out a little bit from the rest of the story, like a spider bite on a child's calf. Don't get me wrong, it completely fits in the book. Henry no. 2 at one point says, when explaining taxidermy, "Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancer are born. To ignore death, then, is to ignore life". This scene fits at the crossroads of several themes of the book. It just caught me off guard. I felt really bad for those little guys, much worse than I did for the characters affected in the book.
Those are pretty much my thoughts. Beatrice and Virgil is short, sweet and has an interesting twist. It is well worth the read and deals with some pretty heavy issues in through a looking-glass that makes them much easier to swallow. It left me with a good taste in my mouth, but I kept on asking myself if I'd seen this trick before. Yes, I have. Yann Martel isn't really showing off anything new. But if the wheel ain't broken, why fix it, right?
Ta for now,
ET out
