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RUTH Padel has successfully ventured into the world of novel writing after having worked in many fields — poetry, prose, broadcasting, conservation and Charles Darwin’s quest for nature and animals. Set in London and the jungles of India, where she lived with animals relentlessly, the novel centres on Rosamund, her wealthy and philandering husband Tyler, their incommunicative son Russel (Padel’s great-great grandfather Charles Darwin) and his dog Bono with whom he shared to laugh, yawn, and whine, for "we are the offspring of common parents". The other characters in the novel connected with Rosamund are her father Tobias Kellar, a snake-scientist domiciled in Chennai, with whom she hasn’t spoken for years; another snake expert, Richard, who was once in love with her but is now married to her friend Irena; and Scott, a policeman specialising in wildlife crime who befriends Russel and creeps into Rosamund’s heart. There are also lots of snakes, gliding along dark Indian forests and occasionally lashing out with unpredictable consequences.
The snake rears up, her hooded head and golden throat towering above the observer violating her habitat. Padel answers the questions of her hatching of eggs and survival of the offspring. The novel cares about this ecological narrative far more than the question of whether the somewhat dull zoologist Richard will be killed by her venom. The novel gives evocative depictions of life in the fast-degrading forests of India. Padel has a real feel for nature. Greatly concerned about the illicit trade in animals, she paints an almost apocalyptic picture of the ways in which the world’s wild animals are being endangered not only by the greed of criminals but also by the peasant’s desperate search for sustenance in economies interested only in development.`A0The only character in India who really interests Padel is Rosamund’s father, almost a colonial-style sahib, devoted to his snakes, attended by largely-silent staff and servants, displaying a passing interest in Hindu iconography.`A0 The other major human character, with whom Richard is infatuated, lives in London but was born in India. Rosa mund Fairfax imagines herself as "a small jungle animal peering from the shadows" and goes through life "with a zoo in her head". She thinks of humans as animals, but has no idea that a pregnant vixen is observing her. The novel’s treatment of erotic love is about as bad as writing about sex gets. The gobblings of Rosa mund’s obnoxious husband, Tyler, on the breast of his Croatian mistress, coated as it is with lumpfish roe, are stomach turning. The death of Bono is beautifully depicted. When careless humans leave the main door open, a fox gets in and the dog gets out. The tenor is sombre, the writing clear and plain. Bono is run over; it is the boy’s first lesson about death, and Russel wrongly blames himself. His guilt and grief, combined with his hurt rage against his father’s promiscuities, are touchingly rendered; and, as it was through the suffering of animals that he became estranged, so it is by helping animals that he is healed. The novel is a touching
narration of love for animals and their behaviour not different than the
human being, including their sex life.
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Padel
has dug deep into the animal world which opens with a postpartum female
king cobra. We observe with microscopic eye "a luminous ant ...
mites like red full stops, sampling her interstitial skin"; a bird,
a tree shrew, a leopard’s paw print. Soon we have received full
lessons on king cobras (possibly more information than we want on
enzymes, polypeptides and glycoproteins) explained very intensely.