The Sound of Butterflies

In The Sound of Butterflies, a proper, naive young butterfly collector leaves his wife at home in a small town in England in 1904 to make a scientific expedition with three other men into the backwaters of Brazil; he returns mute and haunted, a shadow of his former self. It falls to his wife to dig into his life to unlock the secret that denies him his speech and vitality, even though what she finds will change her view of him, and their marriage, irrevocably. I found this book fascinating. The British Edwardian-era setting, with its social constraints and the divisions it made between men and women, even (or perhaps especially) married couples, felt smooth and real. The author played Thomas' and his wife Sophie's separate lives off each other masterfully, alternating lush and bloody jungle with maddeningly uptight British drawing rooms and stuffy mens' clubs. In spite of its raw beauty, King's jungle rings with horror; in spite of its corsets and church pews, her Richmond is sly with rumor and human failings. This is a fine, layered work; I'm looking forward to more from Rachel King. Susan O'Neill, author:Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam

For some reason I wasn't expecting this to be a historical novel when I picked it up, but I was quickly drawn into the period it recreates. I definitely was captivated by the story of Thomas' search for a fabled butterfly (and the recognition and security it would bring him) and the story of Sophia's search to discover why her husband returned from Brasil a mute. I was equally captured by how skillfully the author explored the growing autonomy of women in turn of the century England. All the reviewers comment on the skill and beauty of the language so rather than talk about that I'll just point in their direction and wait for Rachael King's next novel to be published.

Nouveau riche Brazilian rubber barons throw away money on the frivolous things like sending their soiled clothing to Europe for cleaning. They treat their pets like royalty and their employees as expendable slaves discarded if unable to perform the horrific field work. Anyone who objects to the abusive maltreatment is killed. In 1904 English naturalist Thomas Edgar comes to Brazil in search of a rumored new butterfly species. Several months later, he comes home, a shell of his former enthusiastic self. Although outwardly she shows her spouse little emotion beyond welcoming him home, his wife Sophie, horrified by the scars all over Thomas' body and his withdrawal, needs to know what happened to her silent her idealistic husband because she plans to heal him with her love. THE SOUND OF BUTTERFLIES is a fantastic historical tale that provides a vivid light on a cruel Dickensian period in Brazil. The story line moves back and forth between January 1904 in Brazil and May 1904 in England connected by a journal, letters and the perspectives of what happened to the naturalist from that of his wife and himself. Adding to the fascination of this powerful early twentieth century character study is the parable of searching for the perfect specimen in a world of cruelty, abuse and imperfection. Rachael King provides a somber glimpse of inhumane treatment and its aftermath on one person and his spouse that still resonates today in a world of genocide, ethnic cleansing and rationalized rendition. Harriet Klausner