Review by New York Times Review
THERE are all sorts of books about lions. Accounts of lions who come to stay are always popular, as Joy Adamson discovered when she wrote "Born Free" and its sequels. These books succeed because the idea of sharing one's life with such a creature is, at some deep level, very appealing. Then there is writing in which lion imagery is used to make a point about the human rather than the leonine situation. In such a context, the lion is symbolic of vigor, of the masculine, of the untamable. Indeed, so burdened are lions with symbolism that it's surprising they manage to stagger even a few paces, let alone spring at their prey. I came to "A Tale of Two Lions," by the Mexican writer Roberto Ransom (translated by Jasper Reid, son of the well-known Scottish essayist and translator Alastair Reid), in a mood of enthusiastic anticipation, being well-disposed toward lions and their literary depiction. Ever since I read Russell Hoban's remarkable "Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz" some years ago, I have been looking for another piece of leonine magic realism. Lion books need not be long, but they do need meat. And while Ransom's book is charming, it is perhaps a bit too brief to explore its theme of lions lost and found. Two main stories are brought together, to an extent, in a third, but "A Tale of Two Lions" is really just one long short story, or a shortish novella. The Thurberesque drawings that punctuate the book don't add a great deal to a story that, on its own, is perfectly engaging. There might also have been fewer pages of preliminaries, one of which bears a single sentence reminding us of the line used in old maps to fill unknown spaces: "Here there are lions." (Perhaps this is a warning about the virtually blank pages we'll encounter later on?) The first story takes the epistolary form and concerns a lion - small enough to pass for a cat, but leonine in its exuberant habits - that travels in an aircraft from Italy to the United States and then goes missing. In the next story, we are in a museum where a lion on display suddenly leaps out of an exhibit. (This is a lovely idea, and the relationship between the museum attendant and the lion is poignantly described.) Finally, we find ourselves in a circus, where the two lions meet. The first lion, Cattino, speaks Italian (a nice conceit), but all too soon both animals disappear. We are left wondering just who was who. It's all very whimsical, but that, of course, is what a picaresque novel can be. Ransom's lions are elusive, and deliberately so: we see them, and then they appear to be something else; they are gone, yet they are somehow within us. It's like a half-remembered dream - or an unexpected sighting of a real lion in the bush. Alexander McCall Smith's most recent novel is "The Right Attitude to Rain." Lions are so burdened with symbolism that it's surprising they manage to stagger even a few paces.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Mexican writer Ransom's first novel to be published in English, a pet cat named Cattino may actually be a lion, while a stuffed lion named Pasha may actually be alive. The novel, divided into three stories, begins with "Cattino," in which an Italian count anxiously writes to warn his sister about her impending houseguests: his wife, Sophia, and her pet, "a minor god in a cage." Sophia's devotion to the cat-cum-lion drives the count mad with jealousy. "Jeremiah and the Lion," the second story, chronicles the travails of Jeremiah Jones, a Nairobi Ministry of Tourism employee, and reads like Knut Hamsun vamping on bureaucratic absurdity. Jeremiah is paid to dress up as a big-game hunter and guard Pasha, a stuffed and mounted lion. One day, Pasha disappears, and Jeremiah is suspected of fleeing with the lion, though Jeremiah insists Pasha "left of his own accord." Pasha and Cattino meet under unusual circumstances in the novel's concluding story. Line art accompanies the simple, fable-like prose, lending an air of whimsy to the feline antics. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Tame novella about two trickster lions. In Mexican author Ransom's first book in English translation, two lions make their human owners and keepers do crazy things. Cattino, who can morph into a domestic cat at will, charms Sophia, an Italian countess, much to the dismay of her husband, Count Lorenzaccio. When Sophia and Cattino fly from Rome to New York to visit Lorenzaccio's sister, only one--the Countess--disembarks at LaGuardia. Despite her husband's pleas, Sophia has refused to speak to Lorenzaccio: She claims he bribed Alitalia baggage-handlers to "lose" Cattino. The scene shifts to Nairobi, where ne'er-do-well Jeremiah is hired to guard Pasha, a stuffed lion encased in glass on exhibit in the Ministry of Tourism's opulent lobby. A bureaucrat, Redding, claims he shot Pasha on safari, but Jeremiah realizes that Pasha is not really stuffed; he's only pretending to be inanimate when other people are around. After a Masai smashes Pasha's cage, Jeremiah leaves, knowing Pasha will escape. The Nairobi police keep him under surveillance for lion theft. In the last of three sections, Cattino resurfaces in Rome after circumnavigating the globe in a jumbo-jet cargo hold. He's quarantined by police, who will not restore him to Sophia--even intermittent lions are not legal pets--but agree to consign him to Don Stefano's traveling circus. As a circus lion, Cattino exerts his spell on his keeper, who describes how he can't really be tamed. His act, which sells out, consists in turning from lion to small cat and back again before the astonished spectators' eyes. When the circus travels to Nairobi, Pasha joins them, adding his talent of mutating from stuffed to alive in seconds. The duo is unbeatable until the circus reaches Mexico City, where, anticlimactically, the felines wander off. A lion and a housecat are found under a bridge, Pasha really dead this time. But Cattino? Only the keeper suspects he's still at large. Weightless. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
