This is a work of magical realism. Two zebras escape London Zoo during the blitz of world war II. They meet an ineffective and rather pathetic man, son of an Earl, who takes them to his family's estate in Wales. Here he is met by the housekeeper who looks after the animals and teaches the nobleman to be a man.
I have a problem suspending disbelief with magical realism and fantasy. As a result the author has to work hard to bolster verisimilitude. Thus, she uses a real setting and a real time-frame and introduces real characters such as Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, in exile. However, there are repeated disruptive injections of unreality. It's one thing to give zebras a voice and even to claim they can have conversations with humans but another to provide them with the ability to telepathically communicate with other zebras around the world. Footnotes are used which can enhance verisimilitude (Byron did this) but here they seem to be used ironically, in a version of Brechtian alienation. Furthermore, it is narrated in an iterative, looping way, with images and concepts and even phrases appearing and reappearing, as if part of a conversation, a little like the narrative style of The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. Another technique used was to interrupt the narrative to address the reader directly and again this emphasised the artificiality of the story:
- “Oh, and one more thing. This might have been a book with all manner of talking beasts, but we've magic enough.” (Ch 11)
- “Oh, you do not believe in mermaids. Well now, what do you believe in?” (Ch 17)
- “Still, as we know, it is terribly hard to know which stories are true and which are apocryphal, and how we define true, anyway.” (Ch 25)
This mix of reality and fantasy (and mermaids) reminded me of Saltburn by Drew Gummerson though the stories in that collection are more exultant, crazier and in-your-face absurd.
As perhaps suits a story about zebras, there was a lot of black and white. There were goodies and there were baddies and no character seemed to have moral complexity apart, perhaps, from Lord Jones. His character at least had a journey although it was less one of being forged by circumstance and more a discovery of his underlying self.
Anwen Llewellyn, was such a strong women character that she overshaded the others. Heightening the sense of unreality, she was a 'Mary Sue' character, a superwoman who appeared to have no faults or failings, like the lead protagonists in Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.
There was also a lot of shooting at easy targets:
- We know that some of aristocrats were seduced by Nazism in the 1930s (as told in eg The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro).
- The English were mocked or vilified, eg "the English love to get off with fascists" (Ch 25). Ernest's fulfilment was enabled when he abandoned Deptford and embraced Wales. I became wearied at the repeated digs at the English.
- Macho-manliness was symbolised by Mussolini as a shorthand for 'evil'. The ideal of masculinity was represented by Lord Jones, emotionally and physically crippled, in need of a woman (human or equine) to realise his potential. For a rather more positive image of a gentle man read Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession.
- The wickedness of mankind as opposed to the innocence and goodness of other animals was easy to illustrate by setting the story during a world war.
The story was packed with incidence, including espionage and the Ark of the Covenant. There were some very funny moments. I particularly enjoyed the cultural appropriation of Myfanwy who not only stole a line of Christopher Marlowe's but also claimed a Latin epigram as being from the Mabinogion.
If you like absurdist whimsy with a Welsh edge, this is the book for you.
Selected quotes:
“She was in a column of astringent tweed and her mouth was pursed.” (Ch 7 and later)
October 2025; 298 pages
Published by Renard Press in 2023
Also written by Anna Vaught and reviewed in this blog:
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