Beatrice and Virgil

by Yann Martel

I read this book in one sitting.

This is about Henry, a moderately successful writer, who - after having his latest effort rejected - moves to a new (unnamed) town with his wife. Having enjoyed some success previously, he receives letters from readers. One day he gets a parcel containing a copy of a Flaubert short story (with some parts about animal cruelty highlighted), a scene from a play and a note asking for his help.

He seeks out the sender, who happens to live in the same city. He turns out to be a taxidermist, incidentally also named Henry, that appears to be very distant and generally not too likable. Actually, none of his neighbors like him at all.

Henry (the writer, the other Henry referred to as "the taxidermist" for the rest of the book) understands that the help required pertains to a play about a donkey named Beatrice and howler monkey, Virgil. The play does not appear to have much of a story and consists only of the two animals talking, walking, starving. The have endured terrible suffering, that remains undefined for quite some time during the play (and the book).

One reference to it is this:

BEATRICE:
Even better: the Horrors, plural but used in a singular construction, the curve of the s like a ladle in a soup from hell, serving up the unthinkable and the unimaginable, the catastrophe and the searing, the terror and the tohu-bohu.

As the frequent readings by the taxidermist progress, Henry concludes that the play refers to the Holocaust. Through some research he finds connections to the Warsaw ghetto. However, it is not clear for the longest time what the taxidermist's role in WWII was. Victim or villain?

Towards the later parts of the book, the emerging story of what happened to Beatrice and Virgil become more descriptive and brutal, with torture described in detail. It also becomes clear that the taxidermist was not a victim. When Henry realizes this and makes it clear that he wants nothing more to do with the play or the writer, the situation escalates.

I may love this book even more than Life of Pi by the same author, which I didn't expect.

My story has no story.
It rests on the fact of murder.

9/10