23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"For the last three years Mr. Malik...had been passionately in love with Rose Mbikwa.", September 18, 2008
This review is from: A Guide to the Birds of East Africa (Hardcover)
As you wing into the fictive delights of Nicholas Drayson's A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, you might wish to keep the Princeton Field Guide illustrations of these colorful aviary wonders at your elbow. Mr. Malik and others in the novel describe spying (or hoping to, at least) godwits, puffbacks, flamingoes, hadadas, African spoonbills, and a host of other birds roosting, flitting and coasting over Nairobi, Kenya. Their enthusiasm for ornithology rubs off.
But in this Guide, the feathered friends aren't the main spectacle. Human rituals -- particularly mating -- are. Obligatory preening, bravado, and plotting ensue as unassuming "Small Brown Job" Mr. Malik faces off with Harry Khan, a wealthy, flamboyant flamingo type, for the privilege of asking Rose MacDonald Mbikwa, the Scottish-born widow of a Kenyan, to the prestigious Hunt Club Ball.
Honest Mr. Malik wouldn't dream of cheating on the wager to see who can spot the greatest number of different bird species in a week, even when, by chapter 25, the tally stands at Khan, 108 species, and Malik, 49. Khan, willing to throw some money around for victory, hires two Australians to guide him and takes day trips to Mount Kenya and other bird-rich locations. Mr. Malik (as he's referred to throughout the novel) sticks unimaginatively closer to home, at least initially. Still, setbacks beset him. For instance, his car and his bird list notebook are stolen. Then, when he finally ventures farther afield, he must, with heart in mouth, flee threatening Somali gunmen. Nevertheless, this rather bumbling widower finds an oasis of bird life by chapter 34. Can Mr. Malik, sometimes seeming too much the innocent, overtake his rival? Will the wager even matter? Or will the female of the species have her own ideas?
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa invites comparison with Alexander McCall Smith's Ladies Detective Agency series about Botswana, but it feathers its own nest. Its narrator is a bit of a wag, arguably another continent's Mark Twain. He is unidentified but can be interpreted as a fictional version of Drayson. Among other things, he supplies back stories for the characters and takes swipes at many of the social and political contrivances, customs, and conventions of Kenya's multi-cultural population. Drayson prods, with wit, the vulnerabilities he probably witnessed or was told about when he lived in Nairobi for two years.
This novel offers a laid-back tale that meanders some -- a farting bet, anyone? It follows the improbable but amusing adventures of a man shyly in love who doesn't quite know how to convey his feelings to the lady in question. And all the while, it slyly educates the reader about the social, racial, cultural, political, and what-have-you undercurrents in this African nation. Oh, and it not only draws wryly astute analogies between human beings and birds but it allows the reader to be almost as tickled as Mr. Malik when he sights a purple backed sunbird, a malachite kingfisher, or a hoopoe "with its long curved beak and clown's crest." The hoopoe "didn't seem at all afraid...Don't worry the bird seemed to be saying." Is that good advice? Will it all work out for Mr. Malik? Find out for yourself....
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sweet and a bit more..., December 13, 2008
This review is from: A Guide to the Birds of East Africa (Hardcover)
This is a charming, pleasant entertainment with a few moral lessons some of which are a bit heavy-handed but most of which the reader absorbs without really knowing it. If you like stories set in East Africa, as I do, this will be at least an absorbing diversion. It should be noted that what you will learn only about East African birds and their habitat is rather slight. In fact the whole novel is rather slight, but sweetly so and it is so unassuming that it sems unfair to hold its lightness against it.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Having been to Africa, December 28, 2008
This review is from: A Guide to the Birds of East Africa (Hardcover)
I had just returned from volunteering in Tanzania, the country on the southern border of Kenya which is the setting of this book. By chance I chose
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa from the "new fiction" shelf at my local library . What a delight! So much of the background rings true to my experience. The insight into East African culture is rewarding and helped me put my recent experience in perspective.
But the most fun of all is the story with its charmingly flawed characters and accounts of birding woven together to tell a tale of modern Africa.
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