From what I can tell from the three novels I've now read by Boyd, he is consistently solid. None of them would qualify for my book of the year but they are all very readable and interesting. As Boyd likes to work in different genres, this is more of an achievement than it sounds.

Hope Clearwater looks back from her beach hut on the two main espisodes of her adult life. The end of her marriage to a genius mathemetician who goes slowly mad and her work observing chimpanzees. The two stories are told in parallel and are clearly meant to be linked in some way (other than through the protaganist) but I couldn't spot it myself. However, this had no bearing on my enjoyment of the narratives.

The marriage strand is naturally the more introspective of the two. There are some interesting observations on the higher echelons of mathematics, on the dynamics of a marriage in which one party will always play second fiddle to the other's vocations and on madness brought on by the elusiveness of one's goals.

The chimpanzee strand was even more interesting. The band that Hope is asked with observing has split off from a larger group for the north. The northerners start a war against the southerners. But this is not standard chimp behaviour and it goes against all the academic theory of her boss, who becomes desperate to supress Hope's findings.

There's a lot of action, twists and turns stuffed into this book and towards the end it does strain credulity a little. But overall another fine story by Boyd. ( )

Brazzaville Beach is one of the best novels by a very good author. The book combines thought-provoking ideas and a gripping plot. Hope Clearwater is a young Englishwoman who marries a math genius primarily because she envies the way his mind works. A retrospective look at his ideas and her observation of his breakdown is woven between her life in a camp in the Congo where she is one of the observers in a large study of chimps. The camp is situated in a region where constant fighting occurs between government and rebellious forces. Hope makes a shocking discovery about the behavior of the chimps and this sets off unexpected repercussions. Her experiences as she moves between the chimps, the scientists in the camp and the war all around her create an amazing story. This is a book that can be enjoyed on many levels, from the philosophical to the simply suspenseful. ( )

I bought this book last year when it was hyped on LT. I only couldn't remember why, but it brought high expectations for this read. Partly these came through, as I liked the way the book was set up and it was a good read. On the other hand, it couldn't fully grap me...

The story tells the tragic life of Hope, as she reflects on in from a beach house in Brazzaville Beach. Two story lines are told, one in London and one in Africa. They are intertwined, but it's clear the London part happened before the part in Africa.
Hopes life in London with John, her husband, gets worse while John, mathematician, gets crazy while wanting to become famous. Hope works outside the city as an ecologist. In Africa, she studies the behaviour of chimpanzees and finds strange behaviour among them. Both story lines end tragically and show their connection.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2009/0... ( )

Hope Clearwater makes a discovery while observing chimpanzees in their native habitat that runs her afoul of her boss; she's in Africa because she ran afoul of her bipolar husband first.

Her discovery of chimpanzees at war is deadly to her employment. She's forced to sit at Brazzaville Beach in exile from all employment, family, and career. Eventually she returns to work and vindication - whether this will endear her to the ethologists' establishment is not really known.

I'm not sure why the scenes of her on the West Aftican beach stay with me at the expense of the rest of this well-told story. Hope (she of the very evocative name) faces the abyss from the edge of the world, keeping her toe-hold, not being denied.

A worthwhile read. ( )

It's been some time since I've read a book that satisfied on so many levels - vividly created characters, a sense of time and place, an engaging multi-level plot, and philosophical, scientific, and psychological theories. Now what? What to read next that will measure up? I'm hoping it's more of William Boyd. ( )

This is intelligent fiction - I enjoyed the layered stories, the time shifts and the small diversions into other topics which add to the layering and the feeling of 'how it is to be alive'. ( )

Boyd is a master storyteller. Well, he's a master of everything: setting, characters, plot; just everything. I enjoyed A Good Man in Africa just a tad more though, just a tad. ( )

Another of his wonderful stories. Three periods in the heroine's life: marriage to a bipolar mathematician; work with chimpanzees and capture by rebel insurgents; and living alone on the beach, alternating in a very satisfying way, illuminating her character. ( )

It's the first William Boyd I've read, I'm ashamed to say, and I wonder just why it took me so long because it's such an intelligent, well-written novel that now I want to plunge into the others.

Hope Clearwater lives alone in a small beach house of Brazzaville Beach in an unnamed African country. (There actually is a Brazzaville Beach in the republic of Congo though!). She looks back on the cataclysmic events which have changed the course of her life, and throughout the book two stories run parallel, at times echoing each other.

She recalls her relationship and marriage to a brilliant but psychologically unstable mathematician genius. At the same time describes how she came to Africa to participate in a primate research project at The Grosso Arvore Research Center (there are echoes of Jane Goodall's work here) and finds herself uncovering an unnerving truth about the nature of chimpanzees (and by extension perhaps, about mankind's predisposition towards violence). Her discoveries have far reaching consequences and she finds herself pitched against her employer and mentor who refuses to accept her findings.

Boyd is particularly good here at pointing out the dangers of narrowly focused dogmatic belief and academic obsession. I enjoyed the way Hope refers to the mathematical principles she's learned from her husband, John, and tries to draw a philosophy from them to illuminate the seeming chaos of her own life.

The characters, human and ape, were all well-drawn. Here's a male author convincingly able to inhabit a female skin - I felt a lot for Hope. (And I like to imagine for her the happy ending that isn't quite reached in the book.) I also felt deeply for the manic-depressive John Clearwater who fails to fulfill his dream of great Mathematical discovery and suffers terribly because of it.

This book has one of the best first sentences ever:

I never really warmed to Clovis-he was far too stupid to inspire real affection-but he always claimed a corner of my heart, largely, I supposed, because of the way he instinctively and unconsciously cupped his genitals whenever he was alarmed or nervous.

And while anyone who loves a well-written thought provoking novel will enjoy this book, it will appeal particularly to those of you with a love and understanding of maths and science. ( )

Hope Clearwater is one of my favourite characters in a book and throughout it I was hoping that only good things would happen to her. Of course it doesn't really work like that and but her courage and determination throughout the bad things that life sends her way kept me on her side right to the end and have made me reread this book several times. Her journey through England and Africa, marriage, career and love is facinating. ( )

An absorbing tale of Europeans in equatorial Africa, this novel is redolent of authentic local knowledge. The only disappointment in reading Boyd is the persistent hope that he might top his own masterpiece, A Good Man In Africa, but that’s hardly possible. ( )

I think this is one of the only stories I've read based around scientists doing research in the field. I'd like to read others - when the personalities of the animals come into play it seems like fertile ground for good fiction - which this most certainly is. ( )

I liked this book enough to read it twice. Not the most upbeat book in the world. ( )

Perhaps my favourite modern novel - a deeply profound, rich meditation on exactly what makes us human. Which also manages to be an entertaining read - with a bit of chaos theory thrown in for good measure. Multiple readings have not dimmed its power at all. ( )

You never know where you will wind up when you start a book by William Boyd but the trip is always interesting. ( )