Brazzaville Beach

Brazzaville Beach
by William Boyd

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Book Summary Information

Author: William Boyd
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-08-01
ISBN: 0380780496
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial

Book Reviews of Brazzaville Beach

Book Review: Out of Africa
Summary: 4 Stars

Since many readers have reviewed this book before me, I will not summarize its plot, or plots. I found both interconnected stories quite interesting. The account of the central character's life among the chimpanzees and in an African civil war was clearly based on first-hand experience as other readers have noted, and the tale of her troubled marriage to a mathematician in the John Nash mould (A BEAUTIFUL MIND) had personal resonance for me as the son and father of mathematicians. Although I found the methods by which these two stories are interlinked to be cumbersome or even pretentious at times, there is an extensive tissue of ideas knitting the book together into a whole. Among these are the values and limitations inherent in the pursuit of knowledge, and the dynamics of comradeship and friendship in closed societies. But the stories are connected most of all in the character of Hope Clearwater, who emerges as a strong but fallible woman, and entirely human.

The book also makes an interesting comparison with Russell Banks' more recent THE DARLING, whose female central character also works with chimps in a country torn by civil war. In that book, too, sections set in Africa are set off against a portrayal of the heroine on her own ground. I happen to prefer the Banks, but this may only be because I read it first.

Is there are trend to construct contemporary novels out of separate stories which are only loosely connected? Within a six-week period, I have also read David Mitchell's CLOUD ATLAS (billed as a novel) and Joan Silber's IDEAS OF HEAVEN (billed as a "ring of stories," but with at least as much interconnectedness as the Mitchell). Also Anne Michaels' FUGITIVE PIECES, which introduces an entirely new life-story in the last quarter of the book in order to cast oblique light on the subject of the first three-quarters; Michael Ondaatje uses a similar technique -- marvelously -- in DIVISADERO. The multiple story is also a favorite technique of W. G. Sebald (THE EMIGRANTS and VERTIGO), whose novels are closer to memoirs anyway. But you also see it in more popular works, such as Jennifer Haigh's MRS KIMBLE and the opening at least of Kate Atkinson's CASE HISTORIES. It is an interesting and potentially powerful trend -- provided only that the various tales ARE connected in significant ways. The test, I think, is whether any one of the stories would lose by being told on its own; in this particular case, I think it would lose something, but not much; hence my reluctant reduction of my vote from 5 stars to only 4.

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Summary of Brazzaville Beach

In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . .

Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.

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