Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Beatrice and Virgil is the aforementioned book I just finished, the one I thought was fantastic but has only been garnering lukewarm reviews.

I suppose I can see why. It's quite an unusual book and it's certainly not without problems. The central character, Henry, is a Yann Martel-esque writer, sent into a spin of writer's block when his publishers rubbish and reject his latest book, an experimental work about the Holocaust. He receives a strange letter which leads him to an even stranger taxidermist, also called Henry, who has written a play called Beatrice and Virgil, which also turns out to be an experimental work about the Holocaust. The play within the book and the framing device together form the book we are reading, which is, of course, an experimental work about the Holocaust, so it all ends up a bit like reading an Escher drawing.

The weakest part of the book is the story of the two Henrys, which is an odd mixture of autobiographical / naturalistic and improbable. But the play within the play is wonderful. Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a monkey engage in a Waiting for Godot-like dialogue, which starts beautifully: Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice, who has never seen or eaten one. You can read that exchange over at the New York Times website, but to give you a flavour, as it were:

BEATRICE: And what does a pear taste like?

VIRGIL: Wait. You must smell it first. A ripe pear breathes a fragrance that is watery and subtle, its power lying in the lightness of its impression upon the olfactory sense. Can you imagine the smell of nutmeg or cinnamon?

BEATRICE: I can.

VIRGIL: The smell of a ripe pear has the same effect on the mind as these aromatic spices. The mind is arrested, spellbound, and a thousand and one memories and associations are thrown up as the mind burrows deep to understand the allure of this beguiling smell — which it never comes to understand, by the way.

BEATRICE: But how does it taste? I can't wait any longer.

VIRGIL: A ripe pear overflows with sweet juiciness.

BEATRICE: Oh, that sounds good.

VIRGIL: Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

BEATRICE: I must have one.

But gradually the exchanges between Beatrice and Virgil become more sad, then more frightening, and the story around the play takes the same trajectory, leading, inexorably, to a pair of explosive endings. But these endings are nothing in comparison to the devastation of the postscript to the book, which had me putting the novel down in a state of shock.

Beatrice and Virgil is a much darker, much angrier, much messier book than Martel's Booker-winner 'Life of Pi', and I'm sure it will prove both less successful and less popular. But I preferred it. Maybe it's because the tale of a writer struggling to make his way forward after a big success resonated with me, whereas others may find it irritating; and maybe I am more forgiving of flawed novels that try for something unusual, because I know how hard it is to get something complicated right (it's hard enough to get something simple right.) But I think it's Beatrice and Virgil themselves; they broke my heart, just as they should, and the sadness their story created in me made the last part of the book hit harder than I could have imagined. I put this book down with a genuine sense of disquiet and a dark mood I found hard to shake for several hours. Nevertheless I recommend this book extremely highly, if you are prepared to forgive it its flaws.