J. M. Ledgard

In 1975, in the midst of the “Communist moment” in Czechoslovakia, the world’s largest captive herd of giraffes was destroyed in secret by official decree, slaughtered, and processed into feed for cattle on collective farms. As unlikely as it seems, these brutal facts form the basis for one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.
Many things about Giraffe are unlikely, just as the animal itself. The novel begins with a giraffe relating the experience of her own birth on the show more African plain. This is as perfect a piece of poetic prose as you are likely to find anywhere in modern fiction. In the second chapter, the same giraffe, now nearly 2 years old, tells of her capture and transport to a seaport, ending with her swaying in harness above the deck of a freighter. This doesn’t work as well, given the narrator’s use of geo-political designations such as “Czechoslovakians”, “East Germans”, and “the Indian Ocean”. (How would a giraffe in Africa distinguish between a Czechoslovakian and an East German, anyway? And why?) But here ends any quibble I have with the author. Having left Africa, the white-bellied giraffe of the title becomes silent as nature made her, and the rest of the story is told from varying points of view---those of a Czech scientist employed by the government, a young woman who “sleepwalks” through most of her life, a zookeeper, a hunter who must anesthetize himself with alcohol to do what the state has ordered him to do. While they live, and as they die, the Czechoslovakian giraffes have a profound effect on these ordinary people. Reading their story will lift you up, and it will tear you apart. The going up is worth the coming down.

“I am a giraffe, I am about that space a little above the blade, and my bodily intent is to be elevated above all other living things, in defiance of gravity.” show less

Really an excellent piece of work, this. A ocean-focused microbiologist and a deep-cover spy meet and tryst and return to the difficulties and marvels of their further lives. The whole book is thoughtfully structured with some fantastically-turned phrases and use of language. The chronology is pleasantly wobbly and the ending satisfyingly open. (I am increasingly sensitive to lazy or overly-neat endings: it's a peeve, I admit.)

Anyhow, I picked Submergence up because it was linked from a show more screed (which was probably, let's be fair, trolling) about why adults should be embarassed if they're reading too many YA novels, and this was cited as an epitome of an ADULT book, which okay, let's be fair, it probably is. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/06/against_ya_adults_should_be_emb... show less

Submergence is a compelling novel by J.M. Ledgard. In it, he uses submergence as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of life and death.

James More is a British spy who lives in Nairobi. His job is purportedly that of a water engineer. Danielle, Danny, Flinders is a scientist who studies the life of the deepest part of the ocean. They meet at a hotel in France one winter and become lovers; then both go back to their jobs. James is captured by jihadists in Somalia and his and Danny's stories show more alternate through the novel.

After James' capture, he "immerses" himself in his mind,trying to escape his captors by focusing on writers and ideas and happier times. Danny is immersed in her job. She sees the environmental importance of the ocean deeps. Through these characters, Ledgard explores philosophy, science and politics and ways they connect everyone:

"What is likely is that, sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate...It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms because they are the foundation of all forms."

There's a lot to think about. I found James' and Danny's stories compelling. I wanted to share in Danny's discoveries of the deep, and I wanted to see if James escapes from his captors alive. show less

A British spy and a scientist-mathematician fall in love over Christmas at a Ritz in the French countryside, and then must go their separate ways. From there they each submerge into depths beyond their previous experience. In this simple framework bloom meditations of a challenging scientific and philosophical nature, such that they pretty well dominate the narrative. This is a contemplative novel, but it sustains a suspense in which life fences with death; and it is a scientific novel in show more which nevertheless two souls meet and complete each other. It accomplishes all these ends completely and gratifyingly. Deep, thought-provoking, excellent stuff.

We meet James and Danielle independently as they check into the same exclusive hotel on the Atlantic coast of France. We already know however that later on, James, a British intelligence operative, is captured by jihadists in Somalia, and begins many months of a nightmarish existence. Danielle for her part believes the key to life on the planet, and maybe answers to some of the more intractable social and scientific challenges, lie in the deep ocean, where life is chemosynthetic instead of photosynthetic, and where we, as a world and scientific community, have just now begun to scratch the surface of knowledge.

As the story progresses, James wages a constant private battle to keep his life and his identity as he’s shoved from place to place, beaten, kicked, poisoned, and alternately hectored and ignored. Danielle prepares for immersion into the depths beneath the Greenland Sea, sending letters - written out in felt tip on pages from her notebook - to her lover James. Along the way each story poses its issues and challenges. For James, the immediate imperative of keeping his life leads to thoughts of faith - he’s a British Catholic - and a modern world where young men and boys are radicalized to jihadism by clerical Muslims. These thoughts find expression in some of the worst conditions in the world - water-starved wadis in East Africa, ruined Italian villas where the water has stagnated, inhospitable jungles where insects rule.

Danielle’s challenges encompass the broader but no less pressing survival issues for the race as a whole. She believes the deep has lessons for surface-dwelling species that could hold the key to accommodating humanity in the narrow band of the surface biosphere. They - the secrets yet to be discovered - could help humankind build and maintain habitable outposts on other worlds, for example, and may hold clues for next steps in evolution that may have to be hurried along with biotechnological advances.

Mr. Ledgard leaves these questions, particularly the planetary-scope questions, open, as of course he must. But herein lies his agenda: the posing of the day’s most topical and pressing quandaries for consideration. However, I fear I may have sold the visual and fictional effects short here, because, make no mistake, each step of the way they impress, convince, and compel. This is exceptional: ambitious, deep, heartfelt, magisterial, accomplished. Take it up by all means!

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2016/07/submergence-by-jm-ledgard.html show less