A Few Short Notes
on Tropical Butterflies
by John Murray
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Trade Paperback book is in new, never been read
condition. No dust jacket. Inside of book pages are crisp and clean.
Pictorial cover. No creasing on binding edge. Minor shelf wear on edges of
paperback cover. ISBN 0060509295. 2004 edition. Publisher: Harper Books. 288
pages long. Additional pictures of condition are always available.
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
These vivid and compelling tales, many set in Africa and
Asia, are about immigrants and others facing change and dislocation. The
science is never pedantic; indeed the language of biology and natural
history is used to great lyrical effect. The stories are accomplished and
seasoned, remarkably so given that this is the author’s first book. Murray
is adept at holding together a complex narrative and creating characters who
reach out emotionally to the reader upon first meeting. Global in scope,
classical in form, evocative of place, and deeply emotional, this collection
marks the beginning of what promises to be an illustrious career.
The characters in this vibrant debut story collection-doctors, scientists
and others drawn to precise order and logic-go to political and geographical
extremes in search of a sense of purpose. A young American trauma surgeon in
"Watson and the Shark" works for the Red Cross in a central African country.
His craving for "life-or-death, all-or-nothing situations" is cruelly
satisfied when he's shot by an armed rebel and his colleagues are forced to
barter for their lives and abandon the people they went to the jungle to
help. "The Hill Station" depicts a scientist in her immigrant parents'
native Bombay seeking out the "real life" manifestation of the cholera
bacteria she has spent her career studying in cool Atlanta laboratories.
Overwhelmed by the horrors of the disease and the realization that an affair
with a married colleague back home has left her pregnant, she flees the city
and, on a bus headed to the tourist outpost of Mahabaleshwar, meets the man
who will be a father to her unborn child. "The Carpenter Who Looked like a
Boxer" is a beautifully restrained, vivid story about a gifted artisan
trying to piece his life back together around the "great open wound" left by
his wife's departure. Unlike many of Murray's characters, he doesn't try to
run from his problems, but loses himself in his work and his two children
instead. The only sign of strain is the strange, phantom burrowing sound
that he hears in the walls of his house, a house he built for his wife.
Murray's prose is strong and agile, rising to the drama of his scenarios
without being overblown. His symbolism is occasionally too obvious, but this
is a minor flaw; the affecting portraits make this collection emotionally
resonant and enormously gratifying
