Library Limelights 302

 

Chris Bohjalian. The Lioness. Ebook download from TPL. USA Doubleday, 2022.

Popular American movie star Katie Barstow, with new husband David Hill, is on a photography safari in newly-formed Tanzania. It's 1964, and she generously brought an entourage of besties with her: her brother Billy Stepanov and his pregnant wife Margie; her agent Peter Merrick, her publicist Reggie Stout, her good friend Terrance Dutton, and another couple of friends, Carmen Tedesco and Felix Demeter. A few days in, a menacing group of armed men suddenly enters their camp, shoots their native guide and park rangers, throws everyone into the Land Rovers, and speeds them away from the camp. The manoeuvre is fast and almost silent. It's so unexpected that this reader was left agape. The author chose to leave me in suspense as he drew portraits of each member of their group, one after another, and their connections to Katie. Since there are ten people in the party, this construct delays the plot; the longer it takes to learn what's really happening, the more annoyance suspense it generates. Is that just me, being impatient? (I got over it.)

How long before anyone realizes that Merrick and Charlie Patton are not among the captured?—Charlie, the legendary Serengeti guide and hunter. It is Patton's experienced native crew that has been serving the group, from tent raising and cooking to driving and pointing out sights they might miss. Merrick is gleefully booked for a hunting safari with Patton after the others return home. Meanwhile, the speeding jeeps diverge, one with Katie and four others, one with Carmen and three men. Their reactions speak to character, but they are violently struck if they ask questions, beginning to think these are Russian mercenaries. In both vehicles they try to divert and disarm their captors; only one jeep succeeds.

To say more would spoil this thriller. And it does thrill—the Hollywood people guess at motives for their capture, knowing little of the world around them; some initiate rebellious counter-attacks but most end badly. They do know that they could not survive alone in this wild country, surrounded by magnificent but predatory, carnivorous animals. Bodies, dead or alive, are instant fodder for a variety of pickings. Earlier, there was much talk of the deadly elephant gun, the elephant being the biggest prize for a hunter. And how hunting, even in 1964, was being outlawed by many African states. Bohjalian delivers a fine tale in a cryptic plot with plenty of African wildlife.

Bits

▪ The porters were falling onto the dry grass, not dead, but terrified, obeying the men with the guns who wanted them on their bellies on the ground right now. Right. Now. (41-2)

▪ There were protocols. Just as you steered clear of politics with the guests, you never called them by their given names. (64)

▪ David had reassured her that this was a kidnapping, he was sure of it, and the new government in Dar es Salaam or the studio or the American government would pay the ransom and they'd all be released. (138)

▪ "Ever had a broken rib? Open your mouth again and I will have to break one or two with the butt of this rifle." (161)

▪ Felix saw it and he knew, even as he and Reggie and the guard were falling against the seats ahead of them, that his wife had snapped the driver's neck. (182-3)

▪ "Ecological catastrophe. People. You, me. Katie Barstow. Other than the Maasai, we don't belong here." (262)

▪ "Isn't that what your father likes to do, David Hill?" (277)

▪ "Let us go!" she wailed. "Please! Let us go! Someone, please tell me what's happening!" (296)

▪ Imagination was toxic in the dark, a poison that likely spared no one. (319)

▪ "This continent is like a wounded gazelle with hyenas on one side and jackals on the other." (389)

Iain Reid. We Spread. 2022. Ebook download from TPL. Toronto: Scribner Canada, 2023.

The poverty of Penny's life—loneliness, insomnia, physical failings―she seems to accept as part of the aging process. She is more concerned with faint paranoid feelings or losing her memory. After a nasty fall when she's ensconced in a "small-scale assisted-living facility," she is told that she and her husband arranged this sinecure long ago, although he has predeceased her. Both had been artists, Penny a self-abnegating portrait painter in surrealistic style. Although reluctant to be uprooted, as so often happens, Penny quickly warmed to the comfort and companionship of Six Cedars Residences. A glamorous woman called Shelley is the owner/manager; Penny becomes the fourth of only four residents.

She meets Ruth, a linguist and translator; Peter, who never speaks but on occasion plays the same notes repetitively on his violin; and Hilbert, a gentle academic whose world has been shaped by his love of mathematics. Hilbert and Penny strike a deep connection at once. The general factotum is a young man called Jack; he and Shelley are the only other people they see. Jack is kind and dependable. The four lead routine lives: meals together, group discussions, productive private time which for Penny can only mean thoughts of painting again. She is thrilled that she sleeps well every night. Shelley encourages them to rely on each other, as if each individual provides something the others don't have. With her background in science, Shelley believes that as a group they make a unit better and larger than their parts. How much can such an organism contain? Can it spread?

Hilbert agrees to sit for a portrait that Penny will begin. Yet the routine sameness blends one day into another. Gradually she senses that someone else has been in her room at times, finding familiar things placed out of context; she has a nightmare of being sick and told it was real. She worries that aging makes her confuse reality with illusion. Is a piece of art static or does it change according to the viewer? Her companions seem to lose energy and responsiveness. Why was Jack seen crying one night? Penny may be the only resident to figure out the truth. Deliberately simple prose sets an eerie tone for musing on mortality. We Spread is a singular novel, one you will remember. Another unique offering from Canadian author Reid, whose previous publication was I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

Bits

▪ It's sad how I live. Isn't clarity supposed to come with age and experience? (22)

▪ "Don't you remember? The two of you decided this years ago." (37)

▪ "I like the shape of your cheek," Hilbert says, out of the blue. "I've never seen a cheek like it." (67)

▪ "I never felt like calling myself an artist. It never had any impact on my work. It's just a label." (69)

▪ "I guess that nap was a long one. Did we already have dinner?" (91)

▪ "We're together. We have everything we need right here." (113)

▪ "Everyone needs a purpose. Our work fulfills us." (134)

▪ Horrified, I lift my shirt more to reveal that almost all of my torso is covered with the bulging fungus. (171)

▪ What I want, what I've always wanted, is for another person to feel relief from their darkness when they look at my work. (177)

▪ "You're protected here from all the dangers of being an elderly woman." (181)

▪ "When a delicate ecosystem—like the one here at Six Cedars, where we all live together―is created, each life helps sustain the life of another."

▪ "Ask Penny if she finds it comforting that there are mathematical proofs of impossibility." (221)