In the “pristine” environment of the Galápagos, unique animals have no fear of man because they have never been exposed to the depredations of man. Ancient tortoises, sea lions, rare birds, and iguanas willingly share their lives with tourists, swim with them, or “pose” for photos. Galapagos life–in the tourist brochures, at least–resembles the Eden found by Charles Darwin in 1831. While these images may have been true forty years ago, when small tour boats brought the first tourist-adventurers to the islands, they are far from true now, according to Michael D’Orso, who made a number of visits and spent many weeks on the islands from 1999 – 2002. Located 600 miles from Ecuador, which both claims and governs them, the islands have experienced devastating changes in the past ten years, and some real crises in the past three years. Here D’Orso comments on the crises he’s observed, all of which threaten the very existence of this priceless biological resource and natural laboratory.
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“Natives” and “exotics,” terms often used to describe the relationship of plants to their environments, also refers, in this novel, to the characters who populate it, since all of the main characters live in foreign environments which have their own native populations. The Forder family, in the first of three major story lines, is on assignment in Ecuador in 1970, where the father works for the US State Department. In the second section, which takes place in 1929, Violet Clarence (Rosalind Forder’s mother) is living in the bush in Australia, helping clear the land to build a home in the bush. Part III follows a distant relative, a Mr. Clarence, who in 1822 lives in Scotland, though he is not Scottish. He and his foster son George emigrate to St. Michael in the Portuguese Azores. In each of these three story lines, the “exotic,” foreign residents permanently affect the environments in which they live. Alison clearly believes that despoiling a natural environment by removing or adding new plants and/or animals is both dangerous and foolish, no matter how honorable the motives might be.
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Posted in 9c-2009 Reviews, Coming-of-age, Croatia, Experimental, Historical, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Yugoslavia on Jan 17th, 2011
Croatian author Josip Novakovich crafts a novel here which bursts the bounds of genre. Both naturalistic in its depiction of the Yugoslavian war and its atrocities, and fantastic and darkly absurd in its depiction of the life of main character Ivan Dolinar, the novel seesaws between the horrific and the hilarious. Surprising in his ability to wrest unique images from universal experiences, Novakovich writes with such clarity and directness that the reader immediately identifies with Ivan in his predicaments and empathizes with him as uncontrollable forces buffet him throughout his life. The novel follows him from childhood to his fifties, and the conclusion is a blockbuster, sixty pages of the most absurd, farcical, and hilariously ironic writing in recent memory, a section which comes close to slapstick at the same time that it is indescribably bleak.
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A young Kurdish boy, living in the Zagros Mountains in 1921, has always felt loved and protected, despite his family’s “poverty.” He enjoys “flying” from the roof of the family’s hut, experiencing the soaring feelings of earth and heaven at the same time, and identifying with the falcons. In gorgeous and poetic language, author Laleh Khadivi, recreates the “gloried ground” to which the boy is connected by birth and culture. Soon after his initiation into manhood, at age seven, he accompanies the village men to a mountain lookout, where they wait for the shah’s troops. In the ensuing massacre, the boy is orphaned, and he leaves the battlefield with the shah’s army, without a backward glance, ultimately consoled by the fact that he will be getting boots, a whole new “family,” and a new way of life. His eventual assignment to Kermanshah, a Kurdish city, in 1940, and his long residence there, bring his personal conflicts to a head.
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The Ventriloquist’s Tale opens and closes with addresses by a mysterious, third person ventriloquist/narrator, representing the old Amerindian culture of myth and magic of southern Guyana. This narrator indicates that he is not the hero of the book because, as he tells the reader, “Your heroes and heroines are slaves to time…. They’ve forgotten how to be playful and have no appetite for adventure.” As the narrator unfolds the stories of the McKinnon family, half Scottish and half Wapisiana, we see illustrated in their lives the conflicts (and occasional melding) of their ancient ways with western science, religion, and exploitation. The narrator and, one understands, the author come down strongly on the side of the ancients, as the Amerindian characters enchant, amuse, and play with us while they show us their struggle with European intruders, including, at one point, Evelyn Waugh in search of inspiration.
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