Amazon.com
Two women. Two centuries. One novel. It's an almost unthinkable challenge, but one that Richard Bausch (
In the Night Season,
Someone to Watch Over Me), commits to fully in
Hello to the Cannibals. Bausch imagines a time-defying friendship emerging between Mary Kingsley, the famous Victorian explorer, and Lily Austin, a college dropout in the late 1980s who shows signs of having a promising future as a playwright. How these two women are connected, whether through stifling domestic circumstances, thwarted affections, or sheer determination, remains questionable throughout this huge novel, but it's fun to suppose, in any case. Mary, an autodidact who began a love affair with the West Coast of Africa near the end of her short life, was sentenced to a life of spinsterhood and servitude inside her own family. Lily, by contrast, is a modern woman whose hasty young marriage results in her living with her husband's estranged and whiskey-soaked family. Both heroines write their deepest fears and hopes in letter form, thus writing to and answering each other. But Bausch, in dealing with a real person's life in fictional form in contrast to an entirely fictional creation, further loads Mary Kingsley's story with a richer authenticity. Blending historical fiction and contemporary fiction would be considered an act of literary daring in lesser hands; it's a very good thing, then, that Bausch's writing is timeless, bold, and genuine throughout.
--Emily Russin
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From Publishers Weekly
Two women who write-Lily Austin, a young wife living in Oxford, Miss., in the early 1990s, and Mary Kingsley, the real-life 1890s explorer and author of Travels in West Africa-are the dual protagonists of this novel by acclaimed short-story writer Bausch. Lily, the daughter of two Washington, D.C., actors, leaves college-and her best friend, Dominic, to whom she loses her virginity just before he realizes he is gay-to marry Tyler Harrison, her roommate Sheri Galatierre's half brother. The couple move to Mississippi and live briefly with the Galatierres, a wealthy, complicated, enveloping family. At first their stay is blissful, but when Lily tells Tyler that she is pregnant, he turns strangely distant. His explanation for his behavior, which comes just before the baby is born, threatens their marriage; meantime, a terrible accident devastates the whole Galatierre clan. Throughout it all, Lily is writing a play about Mary Kingsley, which makes for an uneasy segue to Kingsley's life. Kingsley is writing a diary addressed to an unknown future reader, through which readers are granted glimpses of the Kingsley family (particularly her favored but incompetent brother Charley), and Kingsley's travels-first to the Canary Islands, then to West Africa. Kingsley, a cult figure, is a tempting subject for fictional rendering, but devotees may take issue at Bausch's portrait of her, which leaves out much of her biting wit and casual savagery. Lily herself is a curiously static character, changing little from start to finish, though her relationship with the volatile Tyler is convincingly charged. The novel's unwieldiness can make it a laborious read, but a number of very good, lively scenes-particularly those involving the Galatierre family-lighten the journey.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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