Brazzaville Beach

This intriguing story is told in three parts, two by first person narrator, anthropologist Hope Clearwater and one about her in the third person. It is the early '60s and the stories alternate between Hope in Brazziville Beach, somewhere on the edge of post colonial Africa; Hope studying a break away colony of African chimpanzees; and Hope's pursuit of the man she eventually marries back when she was in university in England. Before she goes to Africa Hope chased and caught genius mathematician John Clearwater and we are given a glimpse of her marriage as her husband descends into despair, eventually seeking another woman before he descends even deeper into a kind of madness, seeking the cure that only suicide can bring. Hope accepts a position in Africa observing and being accepted by African primates. She is working for Dr. Mallabar, the undisputed expert in chimp research, however when she discovers that chimps can be cannibalistic and violent, Mallabar refuses to believe her, then her tent burns down and all her research is lost. It seems her famous boss does not want his findings questioned by newcomer Hope, or anyone else for that matter. Then when she gives him undisputed evidence, he attacks her. She flees the camp and is captured by a guerrilla faction that is fighting to overthrow the government and now Hope has much bigger problems than whether or not she is going to be credited with the discovery that chimps are more human-like than was previously thought. This is a captivating book and without out a doubt Boyd, who was born in Ghana, knows his stuff. I did find some of the going, like the math discourses a bit heavy, but that didn't take away from the story. It took a few chapters before I was comfortable with the shift in time that came with the shifts in point of view, but once I was all right with that, Hope's story grabbed me and wouldn't let go. This book may be over a decade old, but like fine wine or Hemingway, it holds up. There is just something about a good story that is timeless.

Once again Boyd brings together unrelated topics, interesting settings, and full characters to create a story that's utterly absorbing and hard to pigeonhole. Narrated by Hope Clearwater (an unfortunately clunky name for a protagonist), the story looks back at two traumatic times in her life, as she attempts to make sense of them. One of these storylines begins with the completion of her dissertation and her subsequent marriage to a brilliant but troubled mathematician. The other storyline concerns her work some years later at a chimpanzee research center in an unnamed African country (presumably Congo). Both of these threads revolve around the quest for knowledge and the mania that quest can result in, and both are compelling. The latter is especially gripping, containing elements of a thriller within its arc, and the backdrop of civil war. Boyd consulted extensively with Jane Goodall in his research for the book, and the result is a vividly realistic portrait of a tiny international scientific community, complete with petty jealousies and massive egos.It's difficult to write about this book and do it proper justice. So much of it is about Hope's internal struggles about her life, and the difficulties of being married to someone who is greatly flawed. She makes a good feminist character, strong but not pushy, intelligent but not snobby, often conflicted about what the best course of action is, and sometimes mistaken. Her struggle for respect in both the personal and professional realms is at the heart of the book, and is a theme with wide resonance. It's one of the best cases of a man writing in a woman's voice I can recollect. All the characters that surround Hope, even the most insignificant, are carefully crafted and rich in texture. From her Egyptian mercenary lover, to her charismatic project leader and his frigid wife, to her powerful academic advisor, and the volleyball coach turned rebel-each rings true. The novel is not perfect, there are a few minor flaws, such as a contrivance whereby Hope is never able to take photos proving her observations. On the whole though, it's another very solid, and eminently readable work from Boyd.

I adored this book from start to finish. Hope Clearwater is in worn-torn Africa observing chimpanzee behavior when she notices a startling trend that conflicts with everything her boss and mentor believes. Her integrity - and perhaps much more - is threatened when everyone at the camp seems to turn against her. Interwoven with flashbacks to her previous life in England with her bizarre but brilliant mathematician husband and the story of her Egyptian mercenary lover who flies a Mig for one side of the civil war, the story draws powerful parallels between the two primate societies, human and chimp.How can a novel that discusses the difference between turbulence and topology in mathematics be a page turner? You'll have to read this book to believe it. Other than the name of Hope Clearwater - a bit too much in this otherwise subtle tale - Boyd writes deftly and passionately, sometimes with horrifying precision as he describes what is happening among the chimps.This suspenseful and intelligent novel deserves a wide readership. I only wish I had learned of it sooner!

Hope Clearwater sits on Brazzaville Beach, contemplates her past, and narrates the events of this novel. One strain of the story concerns her failed marriage to a mathematician whose unquenched thirst for revolutionary discoveries and their attendant fame drove him to madness. The second strain concerns the animal research that Hope had fled to Africa to participate in. Grosso Arvore Research Center is run by the renowned chimpanzee expert Eugene Mallabar, who was just putting the finishing touches on his master work, describing the peaceful ways of our close animal relatives, when Hope's own observations seemed to indicate that all was not quite as idyllic as had previously been supposed among these primates. But the evidence of aggression that she finds between two competing colonies of chimps threatens the carefully constructed image that Mallabar has built up over the years, and, most importantly, threatens to make the animals less attractive to charitable organizations which fund the project. Meanwhile, thrumming in the background is a guerilla war which threatens to swamp this African nation at any moment. William Boyd takes these various threads and weaves them together, along with a variety of brief comments on scientific and mathematical ideas and issues, into an exciting and intellectually compelling novel. With its Edenic setting and themes of Man's search for knowledge--and the madness the search can bring--the book taps into our primordial myths and some of the core questions of our existence. If it sometimes seems to be almost too consciously striving to be a serious novel of ideas, that ambition is justified, if not always realized, and the philosophical failures are more than offset by the good old-fashioned African adventure story that unfolds simultaneously. The shelves fairly groan beneath the weight of books warning that when a little of the veneer of civilization gets stripped away in the jungle, Man must face the fact that he has a dark heart. And there are elements of that here, particularly in the way that Mallabar treats Hope and her discovery, but Boyd has much more to say besides just this. Perhaps the most exciting message of the book lies in the contrarian stance it takes to the modern age's tendency to romanticize Nature. It is always well to recall Thomas Hobbes's famous description of Nature as "red in tooth and claw." The reader of this book will not soon forget it. GRADE : A

I found this a fascinating book - intelligent, well written, well paced and with wonderful turns of phrase. But what was particularly remarkable was the weaving together of an extraordinary range of topics, emotions, flavors and moods. Mathematics, science, divergent cultures, the senselessness of human and primate violence, the tragedy of mental illness, the poisonous effects of greed and grasping - it's all there. I highly recommend it.