Define Books To Brazzaville Beach
| Original Title: | Brazzaville Beach |
| ISBN: | 0380780496 (ISBN13: 9780380780495) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Hope Clearwater, Eugene Mallabar, John Clearwater, Usman Shoukry |
| Setting: | Republic of the Congo(Central African Republic) |
| Literary Awards: | James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction (1990) |
William Boyd
ebook | Pages: 320 pages Rating: 3.94 | 4696 Users | 350 Reviews
Narration Concering Books 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.
Itemize Appertaining To Books Brazzaville Beach
| Title | : | Brazzaville Beach |
| Author | : | William Boyd |
| Book Format | : | ebook |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 320 pages |
| Published | : | August 1st 1995 by Harper Perennial (first published September 2nd 1990) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Africa. Contemporary |
Rating Appertaining To Books Brazzaville Beach
Ratings: 3.94 From 4696 Users | 350 ReviewsDiscuss Appertaining To Books Brazzaville Beach
Brazzaville Beach is a tremendous novel.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 Id found my place.Its centred around 2 main aspects of Hope Clearwaters life, her time with her husband in the UK and her time without in Africa.The drive of the plot centres around Hopes work observing chimpanzees in the worlds leading scientific project on the subject of the animals. Shes cottoned on to the fact thatAh, another great book from William Boyd! This one was quite different from his others - all about ecology and chimpanzee studies, set in Africa and a side story in the UK. The main character, Hope Clearwater was well drawn and you could feel her frustrations and tenseness during the book, the reason for which is slowly revealed in a series of flashbacks. I thought the African part of the book was very well done and the story involving the chimpanzees was harsh and lifelike. Made me shiver a bit
Something about this is not working. I dont quite know what it is. He writes well and has won many awards, and this is much better than the other Boyd I read. Still...,The first-person narrator is a female. And so thats a bit of, especially the sex scenes. Her husband is a mathematical genius who is going insane, but the writer thinks that 2+2=4 is an axiom (it is a theorem). Anyway, a failed experiment, this Boyd... for me, at least.
I've been meaning to read Boyd for awhile now and this one presented a tenuous link to King Leopold's Ghost: the beach gets its name from one of Henry Morton Stanley's contemporaries (de Brazza) and its main narrative is set in a chimpanzee research preserve within the Congolese jungle. More of a segue than a link, and any similarities end there. The story opens in Brazzaville where the main character, Hope Clearwater, is working as an ethologist studying primate behaviour. During her time
Oh my, this book is hard to explain. First of all, it IS engaging. I didn't want to stop listening. It is full of information. It keeps you thinking, and it doesn't necessarily provide answers. Definitely four stars. It starts and ends with the line "The unexamined life is not worth living." I guess you would have to classify this as a cerebral novel, but also the parts set in Africa are dramatic; one thing happens after another - a civil war and infanticide and aggression and cannibalism and
I couldn't put this book down. I connected on a weird level, maybe because I myself worked with monkeys in Africa, maybe because I see myself turning into Hope Clearwater in a couple of years, with all her scientific-minded cynicism, even though the writing style wasn't my favourite. I didn't mind the constant flip between first and third person narration. I found the part of the story before she goes to Africa (her husband's madness) incredibly boring, but I loved how the story shows that it
Brazzaville Beach tells the stories of Hope Clearwater. It covers two periods, telling them in parallel although one follows the other chronologically. Each period comes to a dramatic conclusion. The book builds to deliver both conclusions as close together as the narrative allows. There are themes that recur in Hope's experiences. There is anger, violence, madness, conspiracy. There is violence instigated by academics, and tenderness provided by soldiers.So far I've described a complex
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