A review from Shawn Stufflebeam

Spiegel & Grau, April 2010

Genocide and ethnic cleansing are not at all unusual in the annals of recorded human history; the desire to exterminate that which we are afraid of, or that which is different or unknown to us seems to be an unfortunate trait of most races and cultures the world over. Consistent with his habit of asking the very difficult questions about what it means to be human, Canadian author Yann Martel has just written one of the most moving books about the Holocaust to date - Beatrice & Virgil.

And before you decide not to read it because you already know that genocide is not nice and that we should never ever persecute and/or murder large groups of people based on their ethnicity or any other classification, bear with me for a moment while I explain why you must read this great book anyway.

When I heard that anthropomorphized animals would factor heavily into Yann Martel's second novel, I began to worry that he was a bit of a one-trick-pony, having used this four-legged literary device in his wildly successful previous novel The Life of Pi. And when I heard that it was about the Holocaust I began to think I might want to do literally anything other than read what was apparently yet another in the depressing and seemingly endless literary cannon about the Jewish genocide.

However, Beatrice & Virgil is a horse of a different color, the author burrowing ever more deeply into the rich soil of stories within stories within stories. Martel sets the tale in an unknown city where an author named Henry is taking a break from writing after having his last idea for a book soundly rebuffed by his publishing team. He is intrigued by a mysterious request for help from an even more mysterious taxidermist who lives in his adopted city. What the taxidermist needs is help with fleshing out a stage play he has been writing all of his life about a donkey named Beatrice, and a monkey named Virgil., Despite his reluctance, Henry finds himself drawn irresistibly into the work, his creative self having been reawakened by this most unusual man.

How can this possibly have anything to do with the Holocaust you ask? That question can only be answered by reading the book. Martel takes his reluctant readers down a reasonably pleasant track, as two creative characters work together on the lines and stage action of two optimistic and gentle talking animals, who discuss life and, oddly, food. Martel is a master of the slow reveal, and although we know from the outset that genocide is in the air, it just really doesn't seem like it from page to page, and chapter to chapter - in the same way that by the time the German Jews realized that there was a problem, they were already on the trains.

In Beatrice & Virgil, Martel is also fiction's apologist, demonstrating his point that until a culture tells fictionalized stories about a topic, it cannot truly understand how it feels about that topic. The problem with the Holocaust history is that it is mostly non-fiction, which does not allow us to explore the more creative notions of what genocide really means. What is it really to get rid of those who stand in your way, who frighten you, who are different from you? One of the author's points seems to be that until we are willing to embrace and explore the darker sides of our humanity through creative fiction, we will never really know in our hearts how we feel, and we will still be in danger of stumbling down those sad and shameful roads again. The very idea that we think that we have heard the story enough is perhaps a sign that we have not. Perhaps if we retell these morphed stories of genocides past, again and again, in new and creative ways that inform our hearts of what it really means to fear and hate, perhaps then we can prevent the story from playing out once again upon the world stage.

If you never read another book about animals or the Holocaust, read Yann Martel's Beatrice & Virgil. You will be glad that you did, and you may find yourself seeing your life and the world, both fictional and otherwise, in a different light.