Customer Reviews

Sound of Butterflies

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow! I just finished the last page, and that was the word that came out of my mouth. For a first novel, this author should be proud. This is an incredible story of one man's harrowing journey through the intense Amazon jungle to pursue his dream, collecting rare and unidentified butterflies. As you begin the story, you think this is going to be the main theme, a group of male naturalists battling the sweltering heat and bombardment of stinging and biting insects extraordinaire, enduring all hardships to capture their prized specimens. But oh how wrong that assumption is. This story starts slow, and rather meandering, increasingly getting eerier and eerier, the suspense building quietly and with a level of intensity that has the reader constantly on the edge. It soon becomes apparent that there is more than meets the eye out there for our hero Thomas, in a jungle ripe with not just the flora and fauna these men seek. We find much much more than colorful butterflies and howling monkeys. Oh yes,..mischief, mayhem, mysterious and monstrous acts unravel. I liked the back and forth strategy that the author puts in place by alternating what is happening both in Brazil for Thomas, and back in England with his lonely wife Sophia. It sets the pace to keep the suspense and allows both characters stories to become interesting. If you are tired of the same old plot lines and mundane novels that you pitch half way through, try this innovative and creative debut. You will not be disappointed. It's writing style finely crafted, and plot well rounded in story line and character depth. Bravo!

As most of the other reviews already state, it is overall a wonderful book. The characters are interesting and the story moves forward making you want to know what comes next. The only critique I have is that I felt that towards the end it just all got a bit cluttered. It felt to me like the author was trying to resolve EVERYTHING in a few pages. To me the end was rushed. But I did overall enjoy reading it and would recommend it to others.

For some reason I wasn't expecting this to be a historical novel when I picked it up, but I was quickly drawn into the period it recreates. I definitely was captivated by the story of Thomas' search for a fabled butterfly (and the recognition and security it would bring him) and the story of Sophia's search to discover why her husband returned from Brasil a mute.

I was equally captured by how skillfully the author explored the growing autonomy of women in turn of the century England.

All the reviewers comment on the skill and beauty of the language so rather than talk about that I'll just point in their direction and wait for Rachael King's next novel to be published.

Nouveau riche Brazilian rubber barons throw away money on the frivolous things like sending their soiled clothing to Europe for cleaning. They treat their pets like royalty and their employees as expendable slaves discarded if unable to perform the horrific field work. Anyone who objects to the abusive maltreatment is killed.

In 1904 English naturalist Thomas Edgar comes to Brazil in search of a rumored new butterfly species. Several months later, he comes home, a shell of his former enthusiastic self. Although outwardly she shows her spouse little emotion beyond welcoming him home, his wife Sophie, horrified by the scars all over Thomas' body and his withdrawal, needs to know what happened to her silent her idealistic husband because she plans to heal him with her love.

THE SOUND OF BUTTERFLIES is a fantastic historical tale that provides a vivid light on a cruel Dickensian period in Brazil. The story line moves back and forth between January 1904 in Brazil and May 1904 in England connected by a journal, letters and the perspectives of what happened to the naturalist from that of his wife and himself. Adding to the fascination of this powerful early twentieth century character study is the parable of searching for the perfect specimen in a world of cruelty, abuse and imperfection. Rachael King provides a somber glimpse of inhumane treatment and its aftermath on one person and his spouse that still resonates today in a world of genocide, ethnic cleansing and rationalized rendition.

Harriet Klausner

"The Sound of Butterflies" is a cracking good read, an incredible journey into the rich, sensuous heart of the Amazon. But more than that it is an important book, one that looks human nature in the face and doesn't flinch when things get a bit ugly.

In this book King has created characters who, despite their many flaws, are compellingly real and who somehow elicit our empathy. At the heart of "The Sound of Butterflies", is the terrifying choice to either speak the truth or remain silent. As a human rights lawyer I may have read my own story into Thomas's but I was struck by the accuracy with which King describes the paralyzing burden of knowing unbearably terrible things. This is one of the very few novels I have ever come across that explores this very struggle, and it should be recommended reading for the many stay-at-home partners of humanitarian workers and soldiers.

I'm not alone in my assessment of "The Sound of Butterflies", which recently won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction. Here is what one of the experts from the judging panel had to say `Rachael King's strength is her rich, lush and sensuous prose; she has a forte for depicting characters we feel compelled to empathize with'.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Because really, what good would a novel set in the rich, lush and sensuous setting of the Amazon river at the turn of the 19th century be, if the author writing it couldn't rise to the occasion with prose that was rich, lush and sensuous enough to transport us all there. King can, and does.

I just finished The Sound Of Butterflies and I loved it. I wonder why it has rec'd so little attention here in the US. I'm so glad I read it. The story just grabs your attention and you want to find out what happened in the Amazon. Also the descriptions of the Amazon, was a wonderful escape but I don't think I could have handled the bugs and the intense humidity. This was a great summer book and a really good ending, also interesting details by the author in the back of the book.

I will be on the lookout for Rachel King's next new book!

I highly recommend this book!

In The Sound of Butterflies, a proper, naive young butterfly collector leaves his wife at home in a small town in England in 1904 to make a scientific expedition with three other men into the backwaters of Brazil; he returns mute and haunted, a shadow of his former self. It falls to his wife to dig into his life to unlock the secret that denies him his speech and vitality, even though what she finds will change her view of him, and their marriage, irrevocably.

I found this book fascinating. The British Edwardian-era setting, with its social constraints and the divisions it made between men and women, even (or perhaps especially) married couples, felt smooth and real. The author played Thomas' and his wife Sophie's separate lives off each other masterfully, alternating lush and bloody jungle with maddeningly uptight British drawing rooms and stuffy mens' clubs. In spite of its raw beauty, King's jungle rings with horror; in spite of its corsets and church pews, her Richmond is sly with rumor and human failings.

This is a fine, layered work; I'm looking forward to more from Rachel King.

Susan O'Neill, author:Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam

It is always exciting to see such great work written by a New Zealander. As far as I was concerned this novel had everything from a great story all the way to page turning suspense and everything in between. There was the forest, adventure, history, controversy, mystery, love, tension and frustration that were so beautifully packaged and well written and described.

I actually read this book a few years back now and kept wishing that Rachael would write another book but so far she never has.

The book was based on an adventure into the Amazon that went horribly wrong and a love so strong that overcame all obstacles. The writer's strong knowledge of the Amazon rainforest and the Portuguese customs, traditions, history and lifestyle infected the book so much so that one couldn't help but feel for that nation and the slowly disappearing forest around them. Her integration of fact with fiction worked flawlessly and her switch from past to present which could have been her downfall, was executed perfectly.

It was and still is indeed one of my favourite books of all times.

It's intriguing to begin reading a novel whose title seems so paradoxical: The Sound of Butterflies. In all my young days chasing butterflies among the wildflowers, the butterflies never once made a sound. They weren't like moths at the window or the buzzy bees, nor chirping birds or the wind through the trees. Not even close. In fact, their silence added to their mystique and beauty.

"Dear Sophie, We have finally reached Manaus and are now being accommodated at the home of Mr. Santos --- a man who has so far proved to be full of surprises, as has the city itself."

Sophie eagerly gets this letter from her young husband, Thomas Edgar. She's in England at home, and he's in Brazil, finishing an expedition to collect, well, butterflies --- ahem, more precisely, to collect especially an elusive butterfly, a unique out-of-balance one. One he can name after her. It's 1905.

So begins The Sound of Butterflies, a debut novel by Rachel King. We are introduced right off to the beautiful, but frail protagonist, Sophie, her love interest and young, naïve husband, Thomas, and their creepy adversary, Mr. Santos. And it seems somehow each of these characters represents more than just themselves. Where are you in them? Where are any of us? For me, it is there but remains like the notion of the sound of butterflies vague.

It's compelling to have an exotic and historical setting. In this case, it's the gratuitously exploited wilds of Brazil over against the stilted, self-righteous England of the early 20th-century.

So King gives us this nice recipe up front and then puts it together and cooks it. But whatever it was supposed to be, it burned and lost most of its taste for me. Thomas returns. Or does he? He is bruised and beaten, torn and broken, but, most of all, mute and irresolute. The narrative mixes it, moving back and forth between England in the present and Brazil in Thomas's past, as Sophie and the readers slowly discover what is happening and what has happened to Thomas. And, it seems, Thomas comes around and so does Sophie. But then, I found myself wondering just what had happened on the macro scale? It has to have been more than just the story of Sophie finding out about Thomas and Thomas finding out about himself. A single butterfly doesn't make a sound, does it? Throughout, I couldn't help but wonder about the sound of butterflies, what it might mean, what it might represent.

"A cloud of yellow and black rose before him like a small tornado, and a faint noise went with it--a rustling, like leaves caught by a wind on an autumn morning, or the shuffle of tissue paper on a desk. The butterflies made a round in the stillness; he had never expected to hear it. The cloud dispersed, joining mates on tree branches that bent under their collective weight. Each specimen was as large as his outstretched hand."

This central image didn't work for me. A small tornado with a faint noise? No! Rustling like leaves caught by a wind in autumn. Perhaps a little closer. The shuffle of tissue paper on a desk? Not in my experience. And even if these analogies did work, what does it all mean? What's its connection to the overall story? To not only our characters but to the world around them? Swirling in my mind is a notion that it is all somehow related to the oppressed and exploited masses, whether in England or in Brazil. Such can make about as much sound as a collective of butterflies deep in the jungle bending a branch.

Like Thomas, I came up somewhat empty-handed.

I really wanted to like this book, based on other people's opinions of how good it is. Unfortunately, the characters leave me cold, I don't care why one of them is mute--the whole Amazon/rubber thing disinterests me (I was hoping that would change). 75 pages were enough for me. I recommend "Away" and "The Dive From Clausen's Pier," both page-turners.