Charlie

(41) This is one of the best books I have read in quite some. time. I had thought Boyd was a spy thriller novelist for some reason; I did not expect such fine writing or such a setting. Hope Clearwater is a recently graduated English PhD in Ecology. The story on its surface is simple - she meets another academic; falls in love; gets married; it doesn't work out and she takes a job abroad and has a life-changing experience. But gosh - it is so much more than that. It is chimpanzees. It is mental illness, it is the chaos of civil War, it is kidnapping, it is boy soldiers, philosophy, calculus, and the search for a meaningful life all in less than 350 fairly tightly written pages.

I was most captivated by the chimpanzees as probably most readers were. It seemed inconceivable to me that the book could still be about so much more with that at its center. The lush descriptions of setting were so rich, yet managed to narrowly avoid being contrived. Hope's inner dialogue felt real to me - her petty annoyances and rationalizations hit home. I think its the contextual details that were so exquisite - the hair on the wine glass at Meredith's, the cold drizzly rain in the hedgerow, the tannic taste of red wine, the dinner-plate sized dry teak leaves, the swollen red vulva of the chimp in estrous. Remarkable.

This reminded me of my most favorite profound yet magical reads over time. Novels like "Corelli's Mandolin," Naipaul's "A Bend in the River," Farrrel's "Troubles." I feel I will need to read this again. I am not sure of the significance or placement of the passages in italics in the third person that began every chapter. They were not always chronological and sometimes not related to the chapter that lie ahead. Sometimes about mathematics or some other scientific discipline.

I can't say enough. A sleeper pick that I picked up from the used book store - how is this not more widely lauded? Seems like it should have won a Booker or something. Highly recommended for the finest reading experience - both literary; with an engaging exciting story to tell. ( )

This is a favourite book. It's intelligently researched; it has a believable and gripping storyline. The writer knows what he's doing. He adopts the female first person in the African section of the novel, as Hope Clearwater the ecologist; and this he does extra well. He adopts third person reportage when writing about Hope, before her repositioning to Africa, during her marriage to a gifted and mentally ill mathematician, John Clearwater.

The novel suggests we ponder on the effects our lives have on others, something that Boyd tells us is one of the last things we learn, if ever.
The vicious anger displayed by chimps, scientists and political foes is a sobering aspect of the book, and it is at the end that Hope finds herself reassessing this turmoil. How responsible is she for some of it? Did she possess enough foresight? Was all the action inevitable?
A great and recommended read.

This is one of William Boyd’s earlier novel, and shows strong indications of the glories that were to follow. Set in Congo, it takes the form of recollections of Hope Clearwater, which in turn fall into two separate narratives. As the novel opens, Hope is living in a beach house on the Brazzaville Beach of the title. She is impecunious but composed, in stark contrast with the tone of the two disturbing stories on which she muses.

She had met, and then married, John Clearwater, an aspiring and innovative academic mathematician. She herself is an ecologist, engaged in postgraduate study of ancient hedgerows. While john struggles to bring his maths research to fruition, he gradually loses his grasp on ordinary life, and suffers a descent into mental turmoil.

Escaping from the emotional wreckage of that failed relationship, Hope joins a project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which is studying in minute detail the behaviours of a community of chimpanzees. Some of the team observe unexpected activity among the chimpanzees, but are encouraged not to pursue it, as unwelcome results might endanger the fragile funding streams which keep the project going. Against this context, Hope is sent off to collect the latest batch of provisions from the nearest big city. This is not simply a case of a ten or fifteen mile drive, but rather an expedition taking two or three days, and requires driving hundreds of miles on dreadful roads, in territory which is lawless, and subject to military action between the strict, tyrannical regime, and zealous armed rebels.

As always, Boyd weaves the separate threads of his complex plotline with great deftness. Hope is an empathetic, but far from saintly character, who has suffered great hardship but managed to fight back against life’s vicissitudes. Boyd always writes with great clarity and conviction, and from his own experience of growing up in Africa, conjures the local atmosphere vividly (at least to my little-travelled mind).

This is not his finest novel, but that leaves wide scope for it still to be very good, and there are clear signs of what was to come in his future work. ( )

Despite its heading trappings, I couldn't say I was moved by the novel and its examination of nature and science, its flourish of systems and the inexplicable margins where our emotions have left us stranded.

My wife was listening to RadioLab and I mentioned this novel. We discused territory and trespass. The consequences explored in the novel are grim. There's some terror in the feral. ( )