≡ Download Beatrice and Virgil A Novel Yann Martel 9781400069262 Books

Beatrice and Virgil A Novel Yann Martel 9781400069262 Books

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Beatrice and Virgil A Novel Yann Martel 9781400069262 Books

Four elements form this novel, listed in order of appearance: 1) A narrative following a thinly disguised Yann Martel; 2) fragments of a story entitled “St. Julian the Hospitaler” by Gustave Flaubert; 3) a play concerning a donkey and a monkey—Beatrice and Virgil ; 4)a set of “cards” describing Gustav’s Game(s). Don’t let the disguised narrative bog you down as it did me the first go around. It serves a purpose. The Flaubert story too, serves a purpose. The play—ah, the play has marvelous moments! And too, does Gustav’s Game. This is a novel that grows more intense with a slow build. While it is worth reading for that intensity, most readers will come away wishing that the build had developed in a more orderly, less biographical fashion and that the ending was not thrust on them in the last twenty or so pages.
After re-reading this novel, I can appreciate the structure a bit more, and even come away with some appreciation of the (auto)biographical wanderings in the first part. The narrator, I suspect, is meant to be an Everyman. In an odd way, I think I like this one better than Pi. BUT, you do have to get past the trumped-up autobiographical bits and then, only in retrospect, do they work.


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Beatrice and Virgil A Novel Yann Martel 9781400069262 Books Reviews

I've taught university classes on genocide, used many texts, but this particular one, using a monkey and donkey in lieu of human characters and narrators, allows readers to engage its horrors profoundly. Is this because we 're able to comprehend the animals' "experiences" more objectively? That would seem to distance us from these subjects, yet this handling of very sensitive subject matter touched me more deeply than any others I've read, including fictional and nonfictional accounts.
Yann Martel's book, "Beatrice and Virgil", is not intended to be a frothy light read. That said, it does contains wit and humor albeit in a self deprecating manner by the author, but always with a deep menancing undertone of tragedy lurking just around the corner. I give the book 5 stars but I can't say I "liked" it, that word reserved for warm fuzzy feelings not applicable here. But it deserves 5 stars. First off, I loved and thank the author for his generous opening of his private life, giving us peeks into his life with a few fictional trappings thrown in for good measure. It reads like a fascinating interview on how an author lives in the immediate aftermath of writing an international best seller. The story then delves into a dark and uncomfortable topic, the Holocaust. It attacks the story from the perspective of a donkey and a howler monkey, two animal characters in a play written by an unfathomable fan/taxidermist figure who seeks the author's help regarding this play. Throughout the book you try to ascertain if this taxidermist is a "good guy" or a "bad guy", without a lot of success. Much like trying to label ourselves based on our thoughts or conduct at any given instant. The book makes a thought provoking suggestion - that to truly "understand" the holocaust, we must approach it not only historically but also from a fictional perspective where fiction installs the emotional aspect of the story, as distinguished from the clinical impact of historical treatises that tell the story but dull the emotional and far-reaching impact of an event that shattered man's God-soul on an epic scale. The book's protagonist, Henry, argues that addressing hard moral issues from a fictional stance opens our emotional involvement with the lesson, versus historical perspective which permits us to safely stand distant and thus potentially emotionally uninvolved. The suggestion tugs at the very question many of us have of the Holocaust - how could we - collectively "we" - have permitted it to happen and what would "we" have done in similar circumstances regardless of our roles? It requires the contemplative reader to ask In a similar situation, what answer would I give, what action would I take, what life would I live during and after an experience like this? That makes for a great book regardless of whether it is comfortable to read or not. The book challenges the world's attempt to look away, much like polite society avoiding uncomfortable mirror truths, where hard looks make us all accountable to permitting many current atrocities to occur unchallenged. The book ultimately asks us to reflect on mankind's accountability one to another. Being the child of a French Jewish Holocaust victim, now deceased, the book gave me a much richer understanding of my mother in ways I never expected. She never talked about her experiences. She did however cry every time she saw hurt and abandoned animals and she was a devoted supporter of the ASPCA. She herself could be unspeakably cruel to the people in her family and in her life. The book gave me a much better understanding of how this could come to be. Two characters in Beatrice and Virgil are both named "Henry", one being the author, and one being the taxidermist. A great tool suggesting perhaps that the best and the worst qualities can appear in all of us, the only difference being the choices we make. We kids lived with the Holocaust's aftermath on a day by day basis in the manner of her life, a life which was incongruously wonderful, amazing, inspiring, and terrifying, dysfunctional, darkly sad, and extraordinarily consumed with heart-rending guilt. Wonderful and horrible all at the same time. We learned to focus on the wonderful part, tried to understand and avoid the terrible part, learned to live around the dysfunctional part, and probably passed a lot of those elements on to our kids who are just now starting their own families. This second generation also carries the story's aftermath to their own lives, hopefully with a large part of the "wonderful" and a lesser degree of the "terrible" with each generation. But like Yann Martel, I don't want them to forget the story or lose the depth of its message. Stories like Beatrice & Virgil and Ursula Hegi's "Stones from the River" Stones from the River bring an understanding that goes beyond the documentaries, both sharing a message that life can be both wonderful and terrible depending on what you take and apply from the messages. Read the book and then find a way to discuss it with a book club or close friends or family. Finally, the book's last chapter deserves multiple reads.
By far one of the worst waste of time. I chose this book because I loved Life of Pi for its unique approach. But this book goes beyond a unique approach. It's almost insulting in dragging its reader through a ludicrous plot and a horribly wrong analogy. One bit of honesty was the first luncheon where the author learns why his book is unpublishable. Yann Martel's publishers should have read and learned. I'm glad he sees us in animals, but it just doesn't work here.
The reviews suggested another book might be a better place for my attention but after reading Mr. Martel's third book I was curious enough to experience this work. Thoroughly novel in it's approach and effective in its delivery. I find his exploration of human suffering worthy of sharing. The Truth draws us close enough to feel, an intimacy with energy to linger in our consciousness. I am deeply grateful for Mr. Martel's offerings. An appropriate selection for a fellow human being seeking to explore the human condition and how we might have gotten here with the world as it appears now. Travel well.
When I read Life of Pi, it was the first book that I re-read passages because so much was within each sentence. I love Mr. Martel's crisp yet complex style.
I was not disappointed reading Beatrice and Virgil. It will be a book that will stay with me.
The horror of the Holocaust slips up on you through allegory and then punches you in the gut. His writing is masterful.
Next step is to find my next Yann Martel read.
Four elements form this novel, listed in order of appearance 1) A narrative following a thinly disguised Yann Martel; 2) fragments of a story entitled “St. Julian the Hospitaler” by Gustave Flaubert; 3) a play concerning a donkey and a monkey—Beatrice and Virgil ; 4)a set of “cards” describing Gustav’s Game(s). Don’t let the disguised narrative bog you down as it did me the first go around. It serves a purpose. The Flaubert story too, serves a purpose. The play—ah, the play has marvelous moments! And too, does Gustav’s Game. This is a novel that grows more intense with a slow build. While it is worth reading for that intensity, most readers will come away wishing that the build had developed in a more orderly, less biographical fashion and that the ending was not thrust on them in the last twenty or so pages.
After re-reading this novel, I can appreciate the structure a bit more, and even come away with some appreciation of the (auto)biographical wanderings in the first part. The narrator, I suspect, is meant to be an Everyman. In an odd way, I think I like this one better than Pi. BUT, you do have to get past the trumped-up autobiographical bits and then, only in retrospect, do they work.