Martel’s second book, The Life of Pi, was immensely popular. (The first, Self (1996), raised hardly a ripple.) Published in 2001, Pi won the Man Booker Prize for 2002, sold more copies than any other Booker Prize winner and is currently being made into a film. All this hype meant there was a huge weight of expectation on Martel’s next book. Beatrice and Virgil appeared in 2010 and rarely have I seen opinion on a novel so divided. No one thinks it is anywhere near as good as Pi, but while some people think it is an honest attempt, others condemn it out of hand. What is going on?
Martel says he is not an autobiographical writer, but the genesis of Beatrice and Virgil, which is recounted in the book, closely resembles his own experience. Back in 2002, he said his next book would be about a monkey and a donkey travelling across a country – which was also a shirt worn by a Jew during the Holocaust. In Beatrice and Virgil, a writer named Henry, whose second novel was very successful, has tried for his next book to find a way of talking about the Holocaust that does not rely on ‘historical realism’ but is nevertheless a ‘true’ representation of the horror of those events. He came up with a ‘flip book’ containing a novel attempting such a representation, and an essay on the difficulty of writing fiction about the Holocaust. But Henry’s publisher vetoed this idea, leaving Henry suffering not from writer’s block, but ‘writer’s abandonment’. This is almost exactly what happened to Yann Martel.
Henry then moves to an unnamed city where he is contacted by a man who liked his earlier book, and is now asking for help with a play he is writing about a donkey, Beatrice, and a monkey, Virgil. Henry visits the man, and finds he is a taxidermist, also called Henry (why?); among his collection of stuffed animals are the donkey and the monkey of his play. Then follows the fairly minimal story of the relationship between Henry and the taxidermist, and his growing understanding of how the play about Beatrice and Virgil relates to the Holocaust.
Those who are sympathetic to the book consider it a worthwhile attempt to talk about how people survive in the face of great evil. Beatrice and Virgil try to develop a language to describe ‘the Horrors’, so they can both remember and go on living. This means using ordinary words, like ‘black cat’, as shorthand for a different and terrible reality. I found their attempt moving, but it seems to me to exemplify the difficulty, even impossibility, of what Martel is trying to do. If the words we already have are not enough to stop us forgetting the horror, and allowing it to be recreated in new genocides, how will having an imaginary language help?
Criticisms of the book fall roughly into three categories. The first objects to the whole project as disrespectful of other writing about the Holocaust, and indeed of its victims. There is a particular objection to Henry’s comparison of his own silencing by his editors with the silencing of so many writers and artists by the Nazis.
Second, there are objections to the way the book is written. I found the prose simple and easy to read – even perhaps a little too plain. What worked well for teenage Pi is perhaps not so suitable for famous writer Henry. But Martel may well have felt that there was no place for elegant prose in what he is writing about.
Third, this fairly short book feels like an attempt by someone with writer’s block to cobble together something out of nothing. In addition to the description of the failure of Henry’s (and Martel’s) flip book idea, a lot of space is devoted to the play (which sounds eerily like Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and even has some of the same stage directions, like ‘a country road, a tree, evening’). There is also a précis of a short story by Flaubert, a disquisition on taxidermy and long descriptions of the donkey and the monkey, and other items in the taxidermist’s shop. What do these add up to? I share these concerns about structure, especially as what little action there is doesn’t gel into a story for me. Is it good enough for the taxidermist to say: ‘My story has no story’?
Here is an example of someone who liked it, someone who didn’t, and someone who really hated it. Other reviews can be found here. Probably the only way of settling this is to read it, but don’t feel bad if you give it a miss.
What Book to Read? 
“They’re considered more maclisune. They got better game with women. They’re bigger where it counts. They’re better at sports where speed is important.”well, to themselves anyway. Most of the above is transitory, and/or, conjecture and/or myth anyway. OK, they play more entertaining basketball. But you’d have to be a woman (of any non-black race) to understand the level of disgustingness that their harrassment can take when they are really, really stupid (an awful lot of them), and are not trying to be charming. It makes you understand why people sometimes questioned if they were human. I feel bad saying this, despite it being true, because there are good black guys–some really nice ones, and some nasty white ones. But there is something gruesome about black sexual harrassment that stands out. I don’t know if they’re proud of it, but it sure is special.Also, even the women have unrealistically high self-esteem. So the sports/get women/big, etc., doesn’t totally explain it. I honestly don’t think all that matters.