Beatrice & Virgil

Henry, following upon the success of his first novel, attempts to sell the idea of a “flip book.”  Not the cartoon-kind, in which each page has a cartoon drawn slightly differently than the page before so that when you flip the pages of the book, it appears to be in motion (a horse galloping for example).  Henry’s flip book will consist of a novel on one side and an essay on the other, both addressing the same subject matter and when you reach the centre of the book, and thereby the end of the novel, the essay will be written upside down, so that you will have to “flip” the book in order to read it.  A novel idea if you’ll pardon the pun.

 

Henry wants to re-imagine the Holocaust.  He wants to write about the Holocaust only represent it differently and when his sales pitch falls on deaf ears, Henry has a crisis of faith, moves out of the country and gives up writing entirely. 

 

Though Henry now spends his days taking music lessons and learning new languages, his pivotal, critically acclaimed first book is still impacting people’s lives and these readers write to him, care of his publisher, who diligently forwards on the mail.  Henry faithfully reads and responds to each letter.  One day, in the mail is an envelope containing pages of an unpublished play about two characters discussing a pear: Beatrice and Virgil.  The playwright, who lives in the same city, encloses a brief note asking for Henry’s help.  Henry decides to hand deliver his response and this is how he comes to meet Henry the taxidermist and playwright.  Together they form an unusual alliance, meeting irregularly to discuss the play and as Henry becomes more and more involved in the taxidermist’s drama, he realizes the playwright has accomplished what he himself failed with his second novel: “he was representing the Holocaust differently.”

 

Pieces of the play are interspersed throughout the novel, and reveal a horror that only Holocaust literature can.  Beatrice and Virgil are a donkey and howler monkey and the play is told from the perspective of the animals, imagining they are being tortured and killed just as sadistically as the Jews during the Holocaust (or the Horrors as Virgil calls it).

 

A truly riveting novel that is not for the faint of heart, Yann Martel, author of the critically acclaimed Life of Pi, has created another masterpiece with Beatrice & Virgil.  This is a book that will linger, long after the final page has been turned.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L :)