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Beatrice and Virgil

Whew.  Wrung out from reading this.  I would not have finished it if it hadn’t been recommended to me.  I found it circular and exhausting.  Yann Martel tells the story of a successful writer whose flip-book about the Holocaust is rejected by his publisher.  He gives up writing and moves to another city where he meets a taxidermist who has written a play about Beatrice and Virgil, a donkey and a monkey that are embalmed in his shop.  Beatrice and Virgil sit on a stage talking, clearly suffering but we’re not sure what or why.   The person who recommended this book to me no doubt did so because the taxidermist’s play is an allegory about the Holocaust.  And strangely, in all my Holocaust reading — diaries, letters, first-hand accounts, detailed fictions — I have never been as horrified and sickened as I was by the sudden rearing of the actual Holocaust at the end of this book. In that, I think Mr. Martel is a brilliant writer.  Not an easy or pleasant read and Martel seems to acknowledge this as the main character, Henry, when he thinks of the taxidermist’s play “But you also need a plot, you need action” and when the taxidermist sends Henry a note that says “My story has no story.  It rests on the fact of murder.”    Am I recommending this to you?  Reading as recreation — no way.  Reading for appreciation of technical, structured writing — maybe.  Reading to be forced to think about the Holocaust as something more than a history — yes.  Mr.  Martel makes it brutal and real by telling the story of a donkey and a monkey.  I can’t explain it more.

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