The Bestiary: A Smoothly Entertaining Read

 

Reading anything by Nicholas Christopher is like a smooth gliding ride. His stories flow, the prose is smooth, the tale unwinds, you don’t want to put it down and then it’s over…  So pleasant, like a purring powerful car on a smooth road up the coast on a nice warm evening. Not a lot may happen on the ride, but it was very pleasant while it lasted.

Nicholas Christopher’s first book was “A Trip to the Stars” – amazing and I need to re-read and review for this site. This book is also very enjoyable and pleasant – not as stellar and brilliant as “Stars”  – but certainly a good read.

All of Nicholas Christopher’s books are described as “magical” and they are, but in a very subtle way for the most part.    The Bestiary is the tale of Xeno Atlas; born in the 1940’s in New York, his mother an Italian American who dies giving birth to him and his mostly absent father  a Greek seaman. Xeno is raised by his Sicilian – (possibly shape-shifting) grandmother, rarely seeing his seafaring father. Although his childhood is lonely and solitary, it is punctuated by the magical tales of animals told by his grandmother .

Following his grandmother’s death,  Xeno’s absent father sends him to boarding school in Maine where a sympathetic history teacher takes an interest in his studies and points him in the direction of the Caravan Bestiary. This possibly real, possibly mythological book tells the tale of the animals that did NOT make it onto Noahs Ark.    Xeno becomes obsessed with this book and its finding becomes the focus of the remainder of the novel which takes us to the jungles of Vietnam, the islands of Greece, Africa, France and Venice.

This is not “Raiders of the Lost Ark” nor is it a Dan Brown novel or a Clive Cussler novel – it’s quieter and more subtle and I really enjoyed it. Again – as I said, it’s like a smooth flowing warm stream of a tale  – takes a while for things to happen  – there is no HUGE reveal, but its an enjoyable tale.