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Beatrice And Virgil (2010)

by Yann Martel(Favorite Author)

3.09 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1400069262 (ISBN13: 9781400069262)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Spiegel & Grau

review 1: Short enough to probably qualify as a novella but packed with enough emotion to fill 300 pages.I liked this book. But I could see how others wouldn't as there are some things in here that easily piss off readers (the play-within-a-book concept, for example).I adored Beatrice & Virgil after the taxidermist's play progressed a bit. The story (in his play) is so visual; I could see the two (as unlikely a pair could be) vividly throughout the book. And the story in the actual book is equally vivid.There are two really, really hard scenes in here that punch you in the face and while you begin to see one of them coming (in the play), the other (in the real story) almost feels irrelevant. I'd be willing to guess it exists for sake of parallelism.I would recommend it with the cave... moreat that it's not the light read that the page/audio length might suggest.
review 2: Martel’s novel is about the Holocaust. I state such a fact so starkly because I am still trying to wrap my head around his use of this topic. I admit, I picked this book up solely because of my deep and abiding affection for Life of Pi – both the novel and the film – and then avoided it for four years after hearing whispers of heavy criticism following its publication. I finally picked it up in part because of the shortness of the audiobook; I needed a sense of accomplishment before starting another twenty-four hour plus audiobook.The novel seems to be semi-autobiographical; the main character, L’Hote, is coming off a wildly successful first novel and struggling to meet the expectations of his readers and his publisher with his eagerly anticipated second novel. Martel undoubtable experienced a similar situation following the success of Life of Pi; I know I was not the only one eagerly anticipating his next novel.Henry tries to write about the Holocaust creating a “flip book” with an essay discussing the Holocaust’s representation in fiction on one side and a fictional account of the Holocaust filled with the very metaphors rarely found in Holocaust fiction on the other, but his publisher rejects the concept saying it is too complicated to read and to sell. Discouraged, Henry moves his wife to another town, takes a job in a chocolate café, learns the clarinet, and begins acting in a local theatre troupe. Fan mail praising his first novel and clamoring for a second still arrives at his door, but Henry is singularly intrigued by one letter in which an elderly taxidermist asks for assistance in editing a play he has written entitled “Beatrice and Virgil”. The play follows the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey named Beatrice and Virgil, respectively, during “The Horrors”, and Henry seeks out the taxidermist to learn exactly what he is trying to say in his use of allegorical use of animals. “There’s nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe.”Henry’s interest in the taxidermist’s tale is due largely to his advocating for a fictional approach to the Holocaust. He bemoans how few novels there are about the Holocaust, particularly ones written by non-Jews, and how those in existence are too grounded in history. (I’ve briefly written on this topic and the opinion of one of my former professors, a renowned Holocaust historian, about the mixing of fiction with the Holocaust.) He wants there to be Holocaust science fiction and Holocaust fantasy novels – a mutually cringe-worthy and intriguing idea – and eventually learns in the course of the novel through his interaction with the taxidermist’s play how such stories might take a reader, or a writer, to unintended places.Beatrice and Virgil, the donkey and the howler monkey, are supposed to stand in for the experience of Jews during the Holocaust and while the use of animals in the portrayal of the Holocaust is not new, these particular animals are written in such a sinister and twisted way that we are to believe Beatrice and Virgil are animals in the way the Nazis unjustly and abhorrently equated European Jews, communists, and other victims of their regime. That is, Beatrice and Virgil sit beside a dead body with a rather blasé attitude and do nothing to assist women, who are humans in the tale, forced to drown themselves and their babies. (It is unclear if such suicidal actions were taken under the regime of the Nazis or the Soviet Red Army.) Thus, we reach the unintended places of utilizing animals in an allegorical manner and encouraging non-Jews – a certain subsect of non-Jews, that is – to write about the Holocaust, and the road to such places certainly raised more questions for me as a reader than I anticipated.That said, I can certainly understand the criticisms surrounding this book and the reasons why so many people say there were revolted and offended by this book. It is one I recommend with the greatest caveat that I enjoyed it because of my personal interest in the construction and presentation of the Holocaust in fiction. less

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Reviews (see all)

thorgr

I was interested in this book because it was Yann Martel and I wanted a good yarn. I appreciated the banter between Henry and the taxidermist and how Henry helped the taxidermist with his problem. What I loved about this book was the scene with the pears, the pieces where Henry is asked to describe certain characters in the taxidermist's play, and seeing the process between a writer and someone who is stuck with their writing. I marked out quite a few places to use for working with my authors, and I do believe I would recommend this book to them for learning purposes as Martel does do a great job with his show over tell and the descriptions of the scenery and characters, while at the same time, walking through the process through his characters eyes (and pen).I know there is a lot of frustration over the Holocaust piece and the way it was represented. I do feel like Martel was trying to do what Henry speaks of, represent the Holocaust differently, but whether or not it works, I can't say for sure. Part of me felt like it had purpose, and part of me felt like it was the easiest piece of history to symoblize and partially disguise on a wide scale.I think Martel is a masterful story teller and this particular novella did not quite meet the magical and wonderful world I was wanting when I picked up his book. It almost felt like he was trying to create something philosophical, and parts of it felt like there was way too much thought into making it something that in the end, it wasn't. If I look at the book from just a reader standpoint without thinking about how it could impact the authors in my publishing house or be used in writing lessons, it wasn't mind blowing, and it wasn't a dissapointment. It just was.

Stefanee

I was expecting strange, since I'd read Life of Pi. Animals, violence, not unanticipated. I was unprepared, however, for the level of violence and the pointlessness of that violence, and I never quite grasped the reason for the two, or perhaps three--depending on what you count--books-within-a-book. In the end, I was unsure how to distinguish my horror at the murderous fantasies of the fictional character from my horror at the murderous fantasies of the human writer behind the novel. This book had all the shockingly brutal aspects of Life of Pi and none of its beauty. I'm not sure I'll read another Yann Martel.

Demira

Interesting.......more than a touch of 'waiting for Godot'.

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