Beatrice and Virgil

I am not sure what Yann Martel was exactly intending here. His previous book, the Life of Pi, is supposed to be the largest selling Booker winning book ever thus making it a commercial and critical success. However, since I haven’t been able to read it yet, I had no pre emptive notions about his writing. I’m pretty sure I will have to read the Life of Pi now, as this book is definitely not the best work of someone so acclaimed.

The story begins off about a writer called Henry who, after having a super successful last book about animals and such, is trying to sell the idea of a book he has written about the Holocaust to his publishers. This book is a flip book, with one cover and side of it being fiction, while the other side is an essay. However, his publishers reject the idea and Henry relocates to a nameless metro with his wife, disillusioned and with writers block. While amusing himself there taking music lessons and with an amateur theatre company, he receives a letter from a reader with an excerpt of Flaubert's tale "The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator", a fable about a boy whose greatest pleasure is killing animals. It also contains a snippet of a play which the reader seems to be writing about a donkey and a monkey talking about a pear. Henry’s interest is piqued and he decides to pay the reader a visit. Once he reaches there, he realizes that the writer of the play is a taxidermist and has his own shop full of stuffed animals. Incidentally his name is also Henry. Though the first Henry has his doubts about the strange disposition and story of the taxidermist, he decides to help him out.

Unfortunately, Martel’s idea of using the parable of a talking donkey and a howler monkey to symbolize the holocaust suffering of the Jews falls flat mostly. The numerous analogies and metaphors just don’t cut it. The donkey and monkey are supposedly walking on a shirt, which is supposed to represent the world as such, with different provinces like Collar. Yea, whatever. While the true nature of the ‘Horrors’ they keep talking about does seem brutal, most of the book doesn’t really hold our attention with its meandering descriptions of Taxidermy and endless conversations in the play. After a point, you start wondering whether Martel is using the way we treat animals as a metaphor for the Holocaust, or if it is the other way around. Ultimately when the truth about the taxidermist is realized, it seems abrupt and not very convincing.

There is, however, a great piece of writing at the end called ‘Games for Gustav’ where Martel poses some grim moral quandaries as a game. These tug at your heart and leave you wondering that if he had elaborated on these instead, we could have had a great book.