Kevin Lanzone Yes! It happened so fast, I could barely tell if it was real. I'm struggling to piece together why it happened. I'm also struggling with the importanc …more Yes! I'm also struggling with the importance of the "flip book" in it. See all 3 questions about Beatrice and Virgil…. Lists with This Book.
Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Beatrice and Virgil. Apr 16, Melinda rated it did not like it Recommends it for: people who enjoy cruelty to animals.
I am shaken with rage as the book is one of the most hateful and ghastly jumble of horrors I have ever finished. At least it is mercifully short. In fact, it is so short, it can hardly be called more than just a long short story.
The main story clocks in under pages, there is tons of white space and the last 8 pages are "games" that feel lifted from works about the Holocaust ranging from Roman Polanski's The Pianist to Sophie's Choice. I read Life of Pi when it first came out and then again last week. It will always stand as one of the best books of my reading life. Beatrice and Virgil is a jumble: a writer who's book has just been rejected, a play that is occasionally exquisitely written that vibrates with beauty and life, a coming-to-terms with the Holocaust, the revealing of a Nazi war criminal who somehow escaped detection who is allowed to live a silent life of peace, a hungry donkey and the scream of a Howler monkey.
But what does it mean? I don't know. I think Mr. Martel had terrible writer's block after Pi the dreaded curse of the sophomore book, even though Pi is really his second novel and he wants to write about the Holocaust in a new way. But he overreaches. And the book references waaaay too many other works of literature. Many are mentioned by other reviewers, and even Mr. Martel quotes a story by Flaubert in long sentences, so it is hard to really even hear Martel's own voice.
When it does shine through it is lovely, especially early in the book read the 3 page description of a pear during the play that comes to him in bits and pieces by a struggling writer also with writer's block clothed as a taxidermist. Both protagonists are named Henry, but usually the elder taxidermist is simply called "the taxidermist".
His wife is immediately repulsed by him, the waiters down the street treat him like a leper and he gives everyone except Henry extreme cases of the willies. Henry sees brilliance in the taxidermist's play and wants to shepherd it.
But the terse, oblique, removed and socially awkward taxidermist is afraid that Henry will steal his material In Pi we are caught up in moments of graphic animal violence, but it makes sense within that story and is balanced out by deep insights into spirituality. I don't want or need Martel to write a Pi sequel.
But this book is so abstract and cluttered with images that it feels like Martel cut up a bunch of better books on the subject, threw the pieces up in the air, gathered them up in random order, added a hungry donkey and a monkey who howls and barfed them out in novella form. Maybe I should try to digest the book before immediately reviewing it, but I need a shower because it made me feel dirty.
As you may tell from my statements, I was horribly disappointed with this book. I just want to put this entire episode out of my mind forever. I have made book investments like that before and they have paid off. I have some first edition Philip Roth signed books and a few others..
It took me less than 2 days to read it and I took the dust jacket off and handled it with such care that it could have be re-sold as totally new.
I don't like the way it feels and I have to live with that in my mind and now out on GoodReads forever. And my "investment" is also gone I lately found out that I can give a book ZERO out of 5 stars, so I changed my review to reflect that. What is the effing point of getting into an argument how someone feels about a book?
Is this not why sites like this exist! Not to fight!. I have to divorce myself from this particular thread. I'm exhausted from being attacked, sucked back in, being asked questions I cannot answer and mostly, having to think about this horrible mess of a "book" again and again and again. I just found out that you cannot give "zero stars".. GR counts it as unrated. Even though I still despise this book, I'll give it one star, but only under protest!!!!
View all 79 comments. Apr 22, Rita rated it it was amazing. It's hard to review this book. I loved the first part so much, the simplicity and innocence of it. It was so seemingly transparent and human and honest.
Then it turned I've read reviews with people saying they felt manipulated, conned, tricked. They are expressing anger over the book and the way it approached the subject and who it was approached by Who is HE to be writing so offensively about the Holocaust?
The symboli It's hard to review this book. The symbolism in the book is too loud and too abundant to make any real sense of. I first thought to describe it as walking around in a dry, dusty, overly warm shop with too many odd and confusing things on display for a mind to process, but every time you turn to collect your thoughts to try to analyze one symbol, you can't help but have another already in your face.
I disregarded that image because I found I was describing the taxidermy shop and didn't want to be using one symbol to describe the way his symbolism was to the senses. Then I thought of it as someone singing in an echo chamber. They keep singing even though the song is just echoing all around, so you can't hear the words or follow the melody since it keeps reverberating back at you again and again, changing the song into something unbearable. But, that reminded me too much of the noise of the howler monkey, Virgil.
In the end, I decided to not try to decipher the symbolism, to describe it at all. I will just go ahead and describe how I felt after reading this book, whether it's what Martel intended or not. I felt traumatized. The book was a traumatizing experience. I think that's why so many people reacted with such anger. It was a hurtful, manipulating, offensive book. But, given the context I think that's what it was supposed to be.
It was , as I see it anyway, the flip book that Henry tried to get published. The first part was "the essay," with the author setting his premise and the second part was the book of fiction, going at the topic from a different way.
And again, I don't know whether this was Martel's intention, but for me , feeling overwhelmed and confused and overall traumatized is what someone should feel after reading about the Holocaust. The book evoked the emotion of it, created the residue of the aftermath one critic said she needed a shower after reading it because she felt dirty , the trembling feeling of powerlessness.
It did an excellent job of making its reader feel victimized, giving readers a hint of the idea of what it's like, so that it won't be forgotten.
The symbolism in the book is too hard to pick apart piece by piece. There's just too much of it and it overlaps and interwinds and is just another layer of being assaulted in itself. But, there were two things that really stood out for me as I was reading. First off, the fact that Henry the Taxidermist would never let Henry the author read the play himself, but rather read it aloud to him. The first time he did this, I bristled. I cannot stand for someone to ask my opinion of something and then read it to me.
I have to read the words with my own eyes. This continued throughout the book, with Henry the author finally commenting, "To read on one's own and to be read to are two very different experiences. Not being in control of the words submitted to his attention, unable to establish his own pace but rather dangling along like a prisoner in a chain gang, he found that his level of attention and retention had varied.
What a control freak. The suffocating, prickly feeling of things spinning away from us should have started up, the survival senses alerting us that we're in a trap here, followed up immediately with my favorite observation of the whole book: "'You don't like people, do you?
The taxidermist looked at the passerby for another moment, then turned his gaze onto Henry--and it was a pinpoint of concentration wholly focussed on him, animal-like in its intensity, exactly that, animal-like. As the taxidermist bore into him with his steady eyes, a single thought occurred to Henry: I am people. It was traumatizing. I wasn't offended by someone not personally touched by the Holocaust writing the book, as some other people were.
I felt it appropriate in what he was saying--that it affected all of us and will continue to touch us and hurt all of us forever, you can't be removed from it by time and proximity, it's something that each of us carries with us because we're human and share the history of being human. At least, that's what I got out of it. View all 10 comments. Apr 20, Trish rated it it was amazing Shelves: literature , art , classics , animals , fiction , one-for-the-ages.
My first reaction was a howl, a braying if you will, into the vastness. Martel does not allow us to look away. He puts his everyman in charge of his own story, and it is not a pretty sight. Echoing great voices in literature through the centuries, Martel chooses elements from many to create a symbolically dense, but figuratively simple narrative in which a taxidermist lovingly recreates the beauty once inherent in animals now long dead.
The simple language, the brave humor, the loving touch, and gentle conversation between two doomed creatures who have seen much and suffered more elicits a moan of pain, sadness, and regret. It takes a brave man to take on the big questions.
Martel clearly studied the greats--those classic works of literature, art, and music handed down through the centuries--to see what links them to us now. Dante's Divine Comedy shows us man, much as he is this very day--no better, no worse. Beckett's deceptively simple dialog in Waiting for Godot , Shakespeare's complexities in Hamlet , Proust's sensual descriptions in Swann's Way are all reflected, refracted through Martel's lens.
He primes us with the bright, fractured landscapes of Chagall, and the heart-stopping chords of Mozart, and onward he leads us "clueless Hamlets" to view with him the world we lived in, live in now, a world we create anew each day.
That animals speak for us, with us, to us makes us search anew for meaning. That the "Horrors" stands in for the "Holocaust", makes neither less potent. That man is as he is, is no less clear. And you, fair critic. Dare you walk in the footsteps of the greats? Dare you take on the challenge of making art, not war? Show us your colors. In describing it to a friend, I call it puzzling and disturbing, and that it does not really succeed as a straightforward story.
One always has a brooding sense of doom, and of something much darker meant by an otherwise ordinary reference. Why does he choose a two-fingered hand jesture for his sewing kit list? Why does Virgil have a soliloquy of just one long sentence? What is the meaning of his [sic:] onelongword: evilivingroomanerroneously? View all 4 comments. Jun 24, Paul rated it it was ok Shelves: hated-it. I disliked Life of Pi, but I thought, well let's give this one a try; it can't be worse. To be fair, it probably wasn't, but it was no better.
I think most available literary devices were used and you can have great fun spotting the various references to other works; many are blindingly obvious, others less so. In brief, the two main protagonists are both called Henry; one is an author with writer's block and the other an aging taxidermist, usually refered to as the taxidermist.
The taxidermist s I disliked Life of Pi, but I thought, well let's give this one a try; it can't be worse. The taxidermist sends Henry part of a play he is writing and the two spend time together going through the taxidermist's writing and his craft. Everyone else seems to hate the taxidermist, even Henry's wife Henry is clearly not a good judge of character and it eventually transpires the taxidermist is a Nazi war criminal.
This is an attempt at looking at the holocaust using animals as characters. Beatrice and Virgil of the title are a Donkey and a Howler Monkey both stuffed. Perhaps it should add up to something profound, but it's all such a dislocated jumble. There is a short story by Flaubert heavily featured about Julian the Hospitaller, which describes the mass slaughter of animals.
The play which is central to the book involving Beatrice and Virgil I'm ignoring Dante is basically Waiting for Godot. There is a spot of Proust in there. However the one image I kept getting, especially towards the end was from the film Marathon Man where a creepy Lawrence Olivier is asking Dustin Hoffman "Is it safe?
Most of the violence is principally towards animals and seemed pointless; the torture scene with the donkey I almost felt I was moving genres at that point into a whole new perverted world was rather too well thought out and imaginative.
What really irritated me were the cards at the end with the "profound" questions on them. Examples being; your family is starving, your young son says he knows where he can get potatoes. To do this will place him in grave danger; do you let him go?
Alternatively, your whole family is about to be taken into the gas chamber and your young daughter asks what is happening; do you tell her? And so it goes on. There is even a blank one at the end for you to make your own up. I was so tempted! This sort of device was, I recall, greatly used in counselling courses and motivational training. I remember participating in a few of these in the 80s when we would be sat in groups and given one of these questions to discuss.
My mate and I would look at each other with a glance that said; "Time for the pub". This has turned from review to rant and I haven't even mentioned the horrific fate of Henry the author's pets! Sorry too much violence,even though I know it's symbolic; the point was lost for me View all 5 comments.
Jul 12, Mark rated it did not like it. I think this book now holds the dubious honor of the worst book I have ever finished.
The story within the story-a play featuring Beatrice and Virgil, a monkey and donkey walking across a striped shirt-is a cheap ripoff of Waiting for Godot. There are other plot points involving the narrator Henry's pets that seem to come from nowhere and lead nowhere.
Finally, the book ends with a series of philosophical questions that strive to be profound, but remind me of I think this book now holds the dubious honor of the worst book I have ever finished. Finally, the book ends with a series of philosophical questions that strive to be profound, but remind me of nothing more than Homer Simpson's musing on whether Jesus could microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it.
View all 14 comments. Apr 19, Robin rated it did not like it. What's wrong with it? All the literary devices are stale the play within a novel, the big chunks copied out of a story by Flaubert that is equally uninterestingly presented, the post-modernist writer writing about a writer who is himself, the tedious Holocaust allegorical back story is not even mildly interesting or mysterious, the talking animals, the waiting for godot thing [it's been done, we hear:] None of the characters are interesting.
There is no plot, really, which is OK that can be What's wrong with it? There is no plot, really, which is OK that can be an interesting modernist technique , but there is nothing else to replace it -- there is no substance that makes you want to sit up and think. The reader cannot but feel he is being scammed, that there must be something deeper to this story that is hidden beneath the surface. There isn't. To be fair, I liked that last ten pages, the snappy ending.
Martel should have cut it back and left it a short story. View 1 comment. Yeah I'm one of those. If you haven't read it, I hope you do. Don't read any reviews or get any opinions first, just read it. Since the Life of Pi mania good on 'im too, Canadian author and all! Martel felt it too. With his wife Susan, a nurse, they pack up and move to another city. But he still receives fan mail from all over the world, and one letter changes everything. A hand-written note is included, simply asking for Henry's help.
Henry is perplexed, unsure what the two manuscripts have in common or what kind of help he's being asked for, though he assumes it's the writerly kind. Coincidentally, the address is only a few streets away, so Henry decides to walk his perfunctory reply over. It turns out to be a taxidermy, full of incredible stuffed animals and animal skulls.
The taxidermist is a highly unusual man and quite alienating; inspired by a stuffed donkey and the stuffed howler monkey that sits on her back, his characters are a donkey and a monkey.
The two animals live on a shirt - a striped shirt - and talk about what to do next. As Beatrice and Virgil's story reveals itself piecemeal, Henry gets closer and closer to the truth about the taxidermist.
It's a truth that will quietly explode in his face and change him forever. This is most likely not the story you would have expected, or at least its tone and style is not.
When I started it, I had no idea where it was going and so let myself drift on its words, taken where it willed. This usually pays off, and it did here too.
This is a book you don't want to overthink, but let quietly stew in your mind for a bit, and just feel. If you try to stop thinking as you read, you'll find the story can live and breathe in your head and take you to a deep dark place. If nothing else, Martel is a delightfully subtle and absorbing writer. It's written in a style I don't know the word for: heavily third-person, very omniscient but sharing only what it wants to, giving us only one perspective Henry's and a strangely limited one at that, yet revealing much.
It's very "narrative", almost like there's a voice-over narrator, as in movies like Stranger Than Fiction. On impulse, he inquired. Henry didn't need a job, in fact he couldn't work legally, but he liked the people at The Chocolate Road and he admired their principles.
He applied, they were intrigued, they agreed that he would be paid in shares, and, lo, Henry became a small shareholder in a chocolate concern and a part-time waiter and general helper. It's not just the style, the voice, that makes this novel truly unique I could never get it muddled in my head with any other story , but the characters too.
Beatrice, the donkey, and Virgil, the howler monkey, are two characters you won't be able to forget in a hurry.
I finished this book nearly a week ago and they're still alive and fresh in my head. Considering how lacklustre Henry is, and how unpersonable the taxidermist is, Beatrice and Virgil really are the main characters here. It's interesting, how they serve two purposes. The taxidermist, whose past I won't reveal for it would spoil the story, is writing his play ostensibly to draw attention to needless animal cruelty, to the destruction of their natural habitats, their homelessness.
Their entire situation is an allegory for something else, and yet even if it weren't, it's still highly relevant. That struck me quite a bit, actually. The parallels, the way we treat animals - the way we treat humans like we treat animals. There was much here that I admired, that deeply impressed me, not to mention the tragic story of Beatrice and Virgil and how towards the end it made me cry. But I confess, I didn't love it as much as I did his previous book.
It's not that it's largely uneventful. It might not be action-packed or highly dramatic; I don't care for that. I think it comes down to the style it's written in. The animals struggle with the double issues of how to survive the cruelties and of how to record them forever. How to survive and how to remember: they come down to the same thing, which is how to emerge as a human or noble animal, in the case of Beatrice and Virgil after suffering through the worst atrocities of inhumanity.
One way to ensure survival of humanity is to record the truth of the existence of a now-exterminated people. But it must be a good recording that truly captures the essence of the event of extermination and of the people killed.
Taxidermy preserves species that have been hunted, some to extinction; to represent a species even when it is gone forever, quoting the creepy taxidermist, takes hard and careful work: "To ruin an animal with shoddy taxidermy is to forfeit the only true canvas we have on which to represent it, and it condemns us to amnesia, ignorance and incomprehension.
And that is why we all read novels about the Holocaust and other cases of genocide and human suffering: to bear witness.
Why do we need to bear witness? Henry himself never actually explains the necessity but I have my reasons for why atrocities such as the Holocaust, the purges of Stalin, the mass killings under Mao, the disappearances in Argentina to name just a few in recent history , should be part of personal and collective memories. Why do Henry, Beatrice and Virgil, and the creepy taxidermist, all, in their own ways, need to record and remember the cruelty of humanity?
Does Henry believe, as I do, that novels preserve memories of evil in a brine of truth, illumination, and warning, preventing them from rotting away into nothingness? Do Henry and the taxidermist, and the donkey and the monkey, believe, as I do, that the best tribute we can pay to those who perished in genocidal rampages is to remember them? Funny because it is true. What a strange person you are. Maybe you ought to get out a bit more.
And, though I may not be as erudite as you, I honestly did not get confused over the tablecloth description. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, I suppose. I truly appreciate any reviewer that will lay it all out there. And it takes real dedication to finish a book that you detest, even if it is only pages. Because, really, do we really need another book about the Holocaust?
As if nothing else of an atrocious manner has ever happened to another group of human beings anywhere in the world? Worse, using animals as allegories to depict the great horrors humans commit upon other humans is an horrific and cruel joke. The writing would have to be genius to justify anyone bothering with it.
The writing style is just so incredibly damned pretentious. Every page is tortured and self-conscious. First of all, you are clearly not an immigration attorney who is familiar with the laws of multiple countries; that is a rare specialty indeed.
See INA Section b 5 , for example, among many others. In addition, the book never mentions what kind of visa Henry has or what his status is. A famous writer or artist or athlete, for example, can receive special treatment under certain circumstances.
Be careful about throwing around assumptions and misinformation. Also be careful about focusing on details that are, at best, peripheral to the story. Second, your own verbal violence is repugnant even if it does not rise to the level of Mr. Hyperbole about shooting a real person with an AK or cutting his hands off is not humorous, at least not among decent people who purport to be adults with literary leanings.
Third, what about the substance of the thing? I still think that Mr. Martel is a very gifted writer and I think that his ability shows through here and there in Beatrice and Virgil. However, I think that on the whole this book is a failed experiment — the thing boiled down to excessively sickening violence without original insight.
I identify with your strong dislike of the book, though apparently for different reasons. I loved the book. Just finished it yesterday. Instead you concentrate on correcting its grammar and sentence construction like a disgruntled High School teacher. A book is a piece of art. I can only hope it was a joke, a bad joke. Notice that Mr. But to focus on his grammar alone instead of actually reading the text for depth and insight and his point of view on the Holocaust, and the pain of human suffering, and the countless other topics that Mr.
Champion apparently has nothing to say about. Sorry for my bad grammar. If anyone chooses to attack my post, please base your arguments on my opinions, not my grammar or petty specific writing mistakes. I will add my voice. I have read the book. What is Martel adding to the dialectic? He is a magpie, fine, but he is dishonest by witholding the true origins, as he was in the limited way he acknowledged his taking the setup for Life of Pi from that Brazilian writer.
There was a theft there, in that the acknowledgement was too little, too late. No, not even an interesting meta-text on an ending, not even believable as an allegory. Just intellectually flaccid. Thank you…Ed…. Yes… I loathed Beatrice and Virgil and spent several days erasing it from my mind…. Your review of Martel gives me hope. BTW, as much as I detested Beatrice and Virgil… no… I need to rephrase that… the word detest indicates a personal response….
I also objectively concluded that the book lacked a sliver of literary merit, based on all I know about literature and writing. Sorry… that sentence got off track. What I started to say was that I heard Martel speak at a book festival shortly before reading the book. He was brilliant — completely convincing in all his ideas. Yet somehow that abortion on paper was born from his intelligence and profound thinking. I guess that reality is a fact of life right? Beatrice and virgil is not a masterpiece, but the plot is interesting.
The end gets a little messy, but, overall its a decent read. I dont think this criticism is in anyway sensible. Find a more objective voice. Some of the the review content was correct. But it was also a quite interesting story. And the complaints about the language are unfounded. And the one about the dangling modifier just wrong. In the end, it Beatrice and Virgil was a sneaky way to write about the Hollocaust, pretty much all a setup for Games for Gustav.
And so arrogantly pompous. I found Beatrice and Virgil filled with light, tremendous humor reminiscent of boccaccio and rabelais and the most crushing irony. Like any book, there are bits and parts that drag, but at its core i.
You have actually featured in the book — in the early pages there is a lunch at a fine london restaurant where henry is heckled by a man who doesnt believe fiction can mean much to a story oft told. He represents whats wrong with how we consume literature today, the expectations we have from it and the expectations we have from ourselves when we read. Admittedly, Beatrice and Virgil was a weird book.
But a creative way of looking at the Holocaust. I still like Yann Martel. Your review offers very little substance. Beatrice and Virgil was, admittedly, not the greatest read.
But I still hold that Life of Pi was amazing. I will give you that the writing, especially in the first quarter of the book, was jarring…that aside, noting the violence in the book as a negative point seems like an effort to ignore reality, ie ignorance, when the subject matter being described was indeed violent. I think alot of people read this book and are struck with a sense of dread over a horrifying situation that the writer does not resolve, and yet is absolute reality that the reader can have no resolution to ever…this leaves the book open in their mind, and not in the sense that they are still thinking of it…in the sense that game 13 exists and 14, and 15 and so on…and that they met and loved beatrice and virgil and that they went through the games and were never compensated….
Dear God, what a lot of smarty pants you all are.. Edward, you are a prick, there is no doubt. Were you beaten as a child, and now need to punish the world with your venom? There is life out there, go see it, and get over yourself. I like what you had to say about the book. I found a lot of what I found in the book, but i must confess that I liked it as much as I disliked it.
I think that is what the author had in mind though. The subject is overlooked in your analysis and that is surprising to me. I am not defending this book though. It does drag on. Love it or hate it you remember it, and it made a large enough impact on your life that you made this… blog… tome? Among literature I hated the old man and the sea for the same reason I disliked this book, but the feeling it gave me is what I remember, not the boring daftness of it.
I think the mark of a good book is that someone, anyone has read it all the way through and was able to take something from it. Iwas surprised though, i actually like the life of pi, his 2nd book, actually i loved it.
Im surprised his book stunk so much. This was an enjoyable review to read. I hate the book. I find Yann Martel pretentious. He is an ok story teller but he lacks originality. I, too, thought the book was a crying shame till about 40 pages from the finish line when I realized that the writer succeeded in elevating the book above himself.
Who cares about how the writer looks at the camera? Those descriptions of torture, the unveiling of the taxidermist — those are rare things of beauty. We were delighted to find a brand new copy of this new book by Yann Martel lying on a street in Fredericksburg, Tx.
However, after attempting to read it, even skipping over many sections, we quickly understood why it was on the side of the road! Truly awful! You spent a lot of energy on that rant, and yet touched on not a single topic that mattered. I have no desire to dig deeper into this website.
Too bad. I found his subject and characters to be very intriguing. After purchasing it, I quickly Googled it to see what it was about.
Bad books, just like bad movies, have their […]. It is about finding a way to talk about something. It is talking about talking about something. That is why it is repetitive and nonsensical and uses lengthy quotes.
None of these are sufficient, but they are something. They are a way of talking. That is why the plot may have dragged: plot is secondary in this work. Style is substance and if you do not understand that, then you have no right to be discussing post-modern literature. But then they have talent. Outrage can be brilliant. Mere puerility never is. Then I wonder if, in some way he is threatened by the novel. The best criticism, like the best writing, is impersonal.
The other kind is emotional, betraying all kinds of motives that have little to do with thought, criticism or even literature.
One of the downsides of the internet. Yann Martell is a thinker — unlike some I could name. You must be a dipwade, because only a dipwade would miss the half-line alliteration. Best catch up on your Beowulf. Usually when people look for review they expect a real review on the plot, storyline, characters and their development etc.
Sadly I find this review not helpful at all. Martel should instead be looking to the events in the Congo or other places in which massacre is taking place. This is in fact what Martel is trying to do. The violence is never at the center of the story but is always on the peripheries as Beatrice and Virgil struggle to fill their Sewing Kit with the tools to rebuild their land. They do not condemn or damn their attackers, but rather seek a way to repair the tears. This translates into the higher story when, at the end, we learn that the taxidermist is not a Jewish survivor, but rather a Nazi survivor.
Because at the end of the day, everyone has to move on and deal with what just happened. Whether that be in Germany, or the Congo, or the edges of the disappearing jungle.
0コメント