Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
Bloody hell: this is some book. I had to go for a walk afterwards to recover.
Henry is a successful novelist, but is having trouble with his latest idea. His publisher has rejected not only Henry’s manuscript, but its very concept. Henry abandons literary life and moves abroad. From time to time, he receives letters from readers. One day an unusual package arrives containing an excerpt from a short story by Gustave Flaubert. Paragraphs have been highlighted: bloody ones depicting high cruelty and animal torture. Also included is a scene from an anonymous play and a request for help.
The return address is local and Henry investigates… And here I stop. Part of the book’s incredible power is how it draws the unsuspecting reader slowly in, like a Venus fly trap. By the time I realised what the book was about, Martel snapped shut his terrible jaws and I was trapped in the narrative’s unfolding horror. There is beauty and hope and unimaginable bravery here too, but nothing withstands the poison. Martel takes the reader to a precipice and pushes him off.
Some sentences were so unbearable, so tense, so sad, I had to look away mid-word to catch my breath.
With the final word, the book closed and I tumbled from the trap. It was hard to eat lunch. I crawled into the woodland with my smarting heart and my mind full of the raw ugliness of mankind’s nature. This is such a book. It’s hard to recommend. It is an extraordinary novel with moments of delicate beauty and pure hell.
Advice: (i) If you read Beatrice and Virgil and don’t recognise the address in the sewing kit, look it up before proceeding; (ii) Avoid all plot summaries: this is a highly spoiler-sensitive novel.
“This was a room full of adjectives, like a Victorian novel.”
For budding writers there is much of interest in the early part of the novel. Henry describes the writing life, book marketing and selling points, the merits of fiction over nonfiction, and the way editors chivvy writers towards an improved product. He talks about receiving and responding to letters from readers, and the entire novel is a study in literary forms and stories within stories.
What to Read Next:
The Kites by Romain Gary - set in rural France, this is a novel of memory, moral choices, and human nature under duress
Last Train to Paris by Michele Zackheim: in this novel Rose Manon recalls her time as a leading newspaperwoman in Berlin and Paris during the prelude to World War Two
