Beatrice and Virgil

I picked up this short novel with the expectation of becoming immediately enchanted, as I had been with Life of Pi. The memory of that first experience of Martel’s writing kept me going as I trudged through the first hundred pages or so of Beatrice and Virgil. And then some sense of the meaning of it began to permeate my reluctant attention. All at once, at the end, I got it. I had my aha! My wow! My sigh of satisfaction. It had all been worth it, that trudging.

There are stories nested within stories in Martel’s little narrative. At the core is a play about a donkey and a monkey, whose close bonds grew through a shared experience of torture and inhumanity at the hands of a group of cruel boys. Wrapped around this tale is the story show more of the mysterious taxidermist, Henry, the author of the play, who has in his shop the true-to-life stuffed versions of a howler monkey (Virgil) seated on the back of a donkey (Beatrice).

Wrapped around the story of the taxidermist is the story of Martel’s protagonist (also Henry), a writer who has had one enormously successful book. Henry the Writer has written another book, this one about the Holocaust, an essay and a novel under one cover; his publishers don’t like it, and he’s frustrated and irritated.

The final (outside) layer is the Holocaust; it could also be said to be the pit that dwells inside the core. So there we have it—the hard, dark pit of the Holocaust wrapped with four layers of consciousness: the tale of Beatrice and Virgil wrapped in the life of Henry the Taxidermist, wrapped in the life of Henry the Writer, wrapped in a personal urgent need to bring attention to the Holocaust in a new and different way.

There are similarities between Martel’s two novels, the most obvious being anthropomorphism, employing animals as human stand-ins. Another similarity is that Pi’s story of his months at sea after a ship wreck is a way of thinking about an event that is otherwise unthinkable to him, just as Henry the Taxidermist couches himself as a naughty boy taunting a donkey and a monkey, so that he can think about an event that is otherwise unthinkable. On the one hand, there is Pi offering an insurance investigator an optional story about the tiger and the raft, a story that he leaves to be accepted or rejected in favor of the original story. On the other hand, there is Henry the Writer revealing the truth about the taxidermist’s play, leaving the reader no choice but to reject the surface allegory and accept the dark truth of the pit.

Maybe it’s a fault of the novel that I trudged through the set-up, or maybe it’s a fault of the reader. This is one of those books that bears reading again. A work of substance, whether a book or a film, reveals new layers, bits of seemingly insignificant detail that become significant with each visitation. I feel this will be true of Beatrice and Virgil.

I read the long section in the front of the paperback titled “Praise for Beatrice and Virgil.” I think the reading of these reviews colored my experience, perhaps even created my restlessness that made the first 100 pages such a plodding effort. But then again, if I had approached the story with no spoiler, perhaps I may have simply been puzzled with it, impatient with it—and then I may have written a review like the one that appeared in the New York Times, which I found to be lacking in insight—among other things.

The Times reviewer, as did others, fell into the comparison pit and never crawled out. Expecting another fascinating tale with a surprise ending, these reviewers were not prepared for the straightforward ending that left the reader with no doubt about what had transpired.

I was so viscerally touched at the conclusion that I find myself intolerant of the critical reviews that I have read, wanting to shake the reviewers and shout in their faces, “You didn’t get it!” Reviews are mixed. Sounds like a classic. show less

The Short of It:

Innocent at first, Beatrice and Virgil leaves a dark smudge on a seemingly white page. It’s disturbing and odd and I have to say it…brilliant.

The Rest of It:

This book blew my mind.

Henry the writer, meets Henry the taxidermist but the taxidermist is also a writer and has written a play about a donkey named Beatrice. and a howler monkey named Virgil. Beatrice and Virgil have long discussions about life, both the good and the bad but there’s a problem. The taxidermist needs the writer’s help in completing the play as the characters are not as fully fleshed out as they could be.

This passage appears on page 80 of the ARC that I have:

Henry: Off the top of my head, without any preparation or much thought, I’d say show more Virgil has the pleasing dimensions of a smaller dog, neither too bulky nor too slight. I’d say he has a handsome head, with a short snout, luminous reddish-brown eyes, small black ears, and a clear black face—actually, it’s not just black—a clear bluish-black face fringed with a full, elegant beard.

Taxidermist: Very good. Much better than what I have. Please continue.

The play continues to unfold in this manner. The taxidermist tosses out a bit of info here and there and Henry the writer, takes it all in, provides help when he can and finds himself completely obsessed with the stuffed animals that this play centers around. Additionally, Henry the writer recently wrote a book of his own that bombed in a big way so helping in this manner is sort of like writing, but not.

I won’t say much more about the plot as you must experience it on your own, but it touches on the interaction between humans and animals, humans and other humans and the fact that evil comes in all forms. Once you figure out what is going on, and where the story is going, you continue to turn the pages with dread but somehow find yourself unable to stop. Martel dangles the carrot so to speak, and you can’t help but take a nibble.

I’d like to warn you that although this book is not overly graphic, it is disturbing and dark and will leave you feeling overwhelmed with emotion. After reading it, I immediately deemed it brilliant but then felt silly for saying so, as I’m not sure the author’s intent was to write something brilliant. I know that sounds odd because most writers probably strive to be brilliant, but it’s so subtle. Whether that was the intent or not, it WAS brilliant and odd and different from anything I’ve ever read. Beatrice and Virgil will be on my list of favorites for 2010.

Beatrice and Virgil officially comes out on April 13, 2010 but you can pre-order it now. show less

Note: This review looks at BEATRICE AND VIRGIL holistically. If you object to knowing anything about the ending, please do not read this review. Simply take this statement with you: I devoured this book and I am thinking rather hard about it . . . perhaps too hard.

In his first novel since the wildly successful LIFE OF PI, Yann Martel decides to approach the Holocaust through a postmodern perspective. He blurs the line between fantasy and reality - and if his AV Club interview is to be believed, he changed the position of that line sometime after November 6, 2007.

BEATRICE AND VIRGIL is told in the close third perspective, through the eyes of Henry, an author with an extremely successful first novel whose second novel was savaged by his show more editors. That second novel was a flipbook, a novel and an essay about the Holocaust. But that novel is not A 20th CENTURY SHIRT. A 20th CENTURY SHIRT is a play by a taxidermist, which Henry eventually rewrites and adapts into a memoir: BEATRICE AND VIRGIL.

Like LIFE OF PI, BEATRICE AND VIRGIL is a story about how we tell stories. The survivors of the Holocaust are dying, but the event cannot be forgot. The Jews, the Poles, the homosexuals, none of the victims can be forgotten. But how will the story be told by those of us who weren't there? We've grown up with a fairly standard Holocaust narrative. It is tragic and somber. As Martel points out, only a few storytellers like Art Spiegelman use fanciful flourishes. I am surprised that Martel did not mention the work of Günter Grass.

Grass's work is also postmodern. His magical realist novels tell of the horrors of the Nazi regime, focusing on the invasion of Poland and the changes within the city of Danzig. The exclusion of Grass soon fell to the back of my mind, only to be recalled when I reached the end. In 2006, Grass revealed that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS. At the climax of BEATRICE AND VIRGIL, Henry realizes he's been wrong about the taxidermist's narrative of the Holocaust. The taxidermist was a Nazi. His point of view changed, Henry rejects the taxidermist's story. How can Grass be ignored?

There is more to BEATRICE AND VIRGIL's crabbed structure than just this bending of Martel and Henry's identities. The philosophical musings on how we talk about the Holocaust are offset by an allegory of the Holocaust: the play-within-the-novel, BEATRICE AND VIRGIL. It's an explicitly Beckett-like production. Two characters, talking to each other. They're hungry and lost. They're surrounded by a world of meaning but don't understand what it means. They're trying to decide how to talk about what has happened to the animals. That's the taxidermist's concern: the destruction of animals. It's an allegory that, as Henry discovers, can be valiant or monstrous.

Then there's also Henry's home life, with his pregnant wife, cat, and dog. There's his careers, as a thwarted writer, a waiter and an amateur actor. There's quite a bit happening in few pages. It is a lovely work, but I think some of Martel's own narrative is lost in the way he drives the mind off the page to think about story and the Holocaust and the way reality and fiction fit together. show less

This novel is both disturbing and intriguing. In a well written story, Martel brings us to the precipice of human nature and proclivity for evil, and the likeness to the nature of animals. The book was difficult for me, with a couple of false starts, but once it got to rolling, I was in until the unexpected finish.

This is a great book for rhetoric discussions with so many underlying currents running through the seemingly ambiguous storyline about an accomplished author and his friendship with a man who stuffs dead things for a living. It makes the reader think, engage in real thought while reading - long after the reading is completed.

It is definitely one you have to read for yourself and a book you will always remember having read.

In Beatrice and Virgil, Martel plays with novel form once again. The main character - Henry - is clearly a representation of Martel. He is a successful author who has spent 5 years working on a book which is an allegory of the Holocaust, only to have it crushed by his editors. Utterly defeated and wishing to leave his craft for good, he and his wife move to a new country and city and are enjoying getting on with life when he receives a letter from a reader of his previous novel, and is pulled into the mysterious world of a taxidermist who is trying to perfect a play allegory of the Holocaust, in which a monkey called Virgil and a donkey called Beatrice represent the Jewish victims.

A lot more transpires beyond this, but.... no show more spoilers.

This novel got fairly annihilated by critics at the time. Most of this criticism seemed to be on two fronts - firstly, it was felt that Martel was being disrespectful of the Holocaust through his allegory, and secondly, it was felt that in writing a version of himself into the novel he was overly consumed by his own egotism.

I didn't feel either of these things when I read it. It shouldn't have worked but it did, despite being really quite odd. I don't think for a minute Martel was making light of the Holocaust - on the contrary, as his character was trying to do, I feel he was simply trying to use an alternative view to bring home the horrors of what happened. It's difficult reading in places, and I think it successfully enables you to properly place the horrors in your mind in relation to the actual Holocaust, despite it being represented in a different way. I also enjoyed Martel as a writer writing about him writing the book we were essentially reading. I think that's been done before, but for me it was interesting rather than a display of arrogance and self-importance.

4.5 stars - a short yet astonishing read. show less

In Yann Martel's fable-like novel Beatrice and Virgil, author Henry L'Hote, who had a wildly successful first book, gives up writing after his second book is rejected by his publisher. He and his wife, Sarah, move to a large city where he concentrates on living. Henry stumbles into an awkward relationship with a taxidermist, also named Henry, who wants his help in writing a play about a donkey and a howler monkey named Beatrice and Virgil. This relationship between the two Henrys and the play is clearly hinting at hidden but much darker secrets.

Beatrice and Virgil has received a host of mixed reviews since its publication. It seemed to polarize readers to such extremes that the widely vacillating reviews resulted in my procrastinating show more on reading Beatrice and Virgil because I enjoyed Life of Pi so much. As is sometimes the case I should have just read Beatrice and Virgil sooner and ignored the people who were probably disappointed that it isn't Life of Pi part 2.

Now, I agree with those who concluded that Martel takes a long time to get to the point of the novel, but, in contrast, following along on the journey did not disappoint me. I felt like it made the ending more powerful because of the stark contrast it presents to the rest of the novel. It is allegorical and Martel certainly gives the reader plenty of clues about the true subject matter of the play. As the description intimates, these clues cover life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

Written in simple language but filled with symbolism, Beatrice and Virgil is a dark novel, especially at the end. (At this point it is probably not a spoiler to mention that it deals with the holocaust.) Most certainly Beatrice and Virgil will make the reader think about the cruelty men inflict upon each other.
very highly recommended; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less

I've put off this review for several weeks because Beatrice and Virgil is so unlike anything I was expecting. After I finished listening to the story, I was stunned into silence, left waffling between wanting to yell WTF and yet proclaiming Martel's brilliance as loudly as possible. After two weeks of thinking about it, therein lies the appeal of Beatrice and Virgil. It forces the reader to stop and think, refusing to let the reader slide without forming some opinion. Furthermore, regardless of the opinion, the novel and its messages linger, haunting the reader for weeks after finishing. It is a tale of responsibility unlike any other, one that continues to fill my thoughts as I struggle to discern my own meaning from it.

Beatrice and show more Virgil continues Mr. Martel's fascinating use of animals as allegory. Of even more interest is the suspicion that Mr. Martel explores his own thoughts on literature and writing through the main character, Henry. At times, Henry's thoughts and opinions sound extremely personal, and one cannot help but wonder if Henry is a touch autobiographical. For example, Mr. Martel specifically addresses the use of animals in dialogue between Henry and the taxidermist. While he states that animals have no set expectations for behavior which makes it easy to shape and mold them, I tend to disagree. Animals have their own built-in characteristics and set behaviors one expects, thereby minimizing the need for character development. We expect a tiger to act in a certain manner, and a donkey in another. The personification of these animals is going to come with the expectations that their human representatives will act in a similar vein. In addition, there is a fine line between animal behavior and human behavior. Humans can be very animalistic and vice versa. This makes it relatively easy to have one symbolize another. As we've come to expect in Mr. Martel's novels, his own use of a donkey and a howler monkey in the taxidermist's story leave the reader questioning the reasons and implications behind their usage.

Again, similar to Life of Pi, there are enough twists and turns to throw the most astute reader off the scent of the ending and the truth. While there are red flags that indicate the story is flowing in a direction not expected, it isn't until the reader reaches this astounding ending where the red flags become apparent. No matter what, the sleight of hand works. The ending is so shocking in its abruptness that the reader is left gasping in astonishment at the truth. In fact, I would recommend not trying to deduce the climax of the novel but rather let Mr. Martel's words carry you to the end. The ending is most valuable when it is a complete and utter surprise.

I remain astonished at the simple brilliancy of this novel. It confirms the idea that people are animals and can be driven to do extraordinary things when it is essential to do so. In fact, Beatrice and Virgil hint that humans are even more dangerous than animals because any cruelty is unexpected. Readers instinctually know that the animal kingdom is cruel in the fight to survive; we do not expect the same from humans. The psychology behind this discovery forces the reader to stop and consider the implications of what Mr. Martel is trying to state. It is a disturbing truth that should be acknowledged more than it ever is and is just one of the ideas that continues to haunt me.

As much as I enjoyed the novel itself, I am not certain that audio is the best format to "read" Beatrice and Virgil. The beginning is painfully slow and almost boring as Mr. Martel introduces the reader to Henry and sets the stage for future interactions with the mysterious taxidermist. More importantly, Beatrice and Virgil is a novel that deserves to be savored and re-read many times over. One cannot savor an audio novel, and wanting to find passages to listen to again and again has proven extremely difficult and frustrating. Yet, Mr. Bramhall's portrayal of Henry, the taxidermist, Beatrice and Virgil is astounding. The reader is never left questioning who is speaking at a given time, and he does an excellent job of bringing all the characters to life. It is well worth listening to the story at least once to be able to get a feel for the characters and their voices, but having a hard copy on hand to re-read passages is essential.

Overall, I loved Beatrice and Virgil. It is a challenging read, to say the least; it does not deliver its message outright but forces the reader to wrestle with the ideas presented and truly think about the lessons being learned. Mr. Martel forces the reader to re-think the Holocaust and even what it means to be human. show less