When the novel opens, Hope Clearwater is living in a house on Brazzaville Beach that she owns as a result of her Egyptian lover's death in the civil war in the Congo. She is reflecting on the complexities of her life over the last two years and recuperating from being taken hostage by the rebels. Hope is trying to figure out all that's happened to her, both in England with her husband and the events that caused her to flee to a new job in Africa, and the challenges she's faced since then. How much of what has happened is due to her actions and how much is just random events?

While I found the stories of Hope's marriage and her later relationship with Usman absorbing and emotionally credible, what made the book stand out for me was the story of the chimp research in Grosso Arvore. For those particularly sensitive to animal stories, I will say that Boyd pulls no punches – he shows us nature in all its gore, sometimes graphically. But this is all animal to animal interaction – there is no suggestion of human cruelty towards the chimps – and I therefore found it quite bearable, like watching a wildlife documentary. Hope is professional in her approach so that the chimps are never anthropomorphised, but clear parallels are drawn between the behaviour of the chimps and the war going on in the human world. And because the chimps are such close relatives to humans, they gradually develop personalities of their own that we care about as much as if they were human. The other aspect of the chimp story is Mallabar's reaction to the threat to his life's work, and I found this equally well executed and believable. Now she was working again she enjoyed and savoured the unrelenting rigour of her approach to her task, the unswerving persistence of her routine and the evident success of her experimentation. In her work she was achieving something irrefutably concrete. However recondite, however parochial, she was adding a few grains of sand to that vast hill that was the sum of human knowledge. She was discovering aspects of the English landscape that were unknown or hidden; and what pleased her most was that she could prove she was right. Instead, they encourage their students to expand their own creativity and originality. Currently, there are 7 professional painters working here and about 20 students who tend to come and go. This large island sits in the middle of the Congo river between Brazzaville and Kinshasa. There are a few villages on the island, where people live a quiet life that seems a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city. A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.I can't say that Hope's characterization is so complete that I came to know her fully. Perhaps we can never really know another fully. There is enough that I would be honored to be her friend. There is also enough that I doubt I'd want to venture into Africa to be there for her.

I remarked to myself several times "I think I've found another author I want to read more of". It isn't that the prose is so beautiful, nor innovative, nor even maybe exactly what the novel requires. This is an author who doesn't write down to you. The novel itself is thoughtful - full of thoughts. I was trying to tell my husband that it isn't full of philosophy, but there is such in it. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. William Boyd, in my opinion, is a brilliant writer who keeps getting better and better and this is one of his earlier books (published in 1990). As an allegory, it works beautifully. There are, however, some perceived flaws. The author superbly looks at our closest relative and makes us think about human behavior. There is abundant sex, and it is physical, but human sex IS physical, just as it is with chimps. I think the sex is well done. It might bother some. Not me. There is discord and aggression and manipulation. The parallels are intriguing. I told you it was cerebral. Continually you are comparing chimps and humans and mathematical axioms. To give the book some more depth (hope and faith may not be enough), Boyd throws in a lot of mathematical theory. Mainly about turbulence. Because maybe, if the formula is right, it can explain all the turbulence in the world?This is the 2nd book I have read in the past 12 months that use the rebellion and tensions associated with the Republic of the Congo (the other being The Poisonwood Bible) Both are written by Caucasians and both spent part of their childhoods in Africa. I think this is part of the success of both these books for me. Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Boyd was in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970 and it had a profound effect on him. Indeed, they are the closest pair of capital cities anywhere in the world (unless you count Rome and the Vatican City). To avoid confusion, the two countries are often referred to by the names of their capitals. I recently had the unique opportunity to travel to Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, and the place really surprised me.

The Congo River is most definitely Brazzaville’s best feature and makes the city what it is. There are a number of well-placed bars and restaurants right on the riverbank where you can enjoy a drink or a meal.Thus, the Republic of the Congo is called Congo Brazzaville, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo is called Congo Kinshasa.

Right from the beginning it has the feel of something rather unusual and for me there was a definite double-take moment when I realised I’d found my place. Though Hope seems to have come to terms with the events of her life that led her to reside on Brazzaville Beach, the reader may not find it quite so easy. And that's a good thing, because it makes this a novel that will stay with you even after you close the cover. During her marital separation, Hope worked on an ancient English estate, dating and describing hedgerows, with detailed specific answers available for her to ponder. However, when her estranged husband comes to visit, her life feels in flux again. He barrages her with his anxiety and failed research attempts. Hopefully by the time you read this the train service will have resumed. Apparently the Chinese train (dubbed the “Gazelle”) is pretty nice, and there’s even an overnight sleeper carriage. I came across this 1990 novel whilst browsing. I hadn’t read anything by William Boyd before so didn’t really know what to expect, but it worked well for me.

About Wendy Werneth

Trips to the reserve are not exactly cheap, but it’s still cheaper than seeing mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda or the DRC. I booked a day trip with Wild Safari Tours and paid 245,500 CFA. Like his 2012 book, Waiting for Sunrise, Boyd employed a complex structure in this 1990 novel about science and discord, both marital and professional. Structure and the sciences are the glue for connecting the themes and metaphors of his overall story, a device for annexing separate compartments of the narrative and cohering it into a whole. Once you let that be, or let it go, and stop worrying if you are comprehending all the pieces while reading it, you can enjoy this compelling piece of fiction. The characters appear warts and all, (robbing me of the chance to hate some of them!) but making the book resonate with truth. The novel felt disjointed in time and subject, and while I get that this was deliberate and added to the effect, I couldn’t get fully in the groove of it. This is s minor complaint and I would definitely recommend it. I just returned from Brazzaville and firstly…thank you so much for writing this because it is very difficult to get good info about Congo especially in English. From what I know a recent guidebook exists but it is in French.