A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga: Stories [Paperback]

Julia Whitty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2002

Bringing a unique perspective and a singular voice to contemporary fiction, A TORTOISE FOR THE QUEEN OF TONGA features lush, poignant stories about the natural world. Here are mammals, historical figures, everyday people who discover the liberating properties of memory and knowledge in the face of captivity and loneliness. We meet a forlorn tortoise forced to live among humans. We witness orcas at Ocean World staging a revolt, using celibacy as their weapon. In a French cave, a young computer animator draws parallels between Cro-Magnon and modern women. One story even travels to heaven, where Charles Darwin seeks the source of human happiness.
Whitty joins her authority about wildlife and her rich imagination to spectacular effect. Drawing on twenty years' experience with making nature documentaries, she takes readers inside the minds of animals and people struggling to overcome their limitations. In a voice as magical as it is informed, A TORTOISE FOR THE QUEEN OF TONGA bridges the mythical and the mundane, the animal and the human. Julia Whitty is a brilliant new storyteller in American short fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Promising, elegant, yet of mixed quality, this short story collection takes full advantage of the author's intimate perspective on the natural world, a by-product, no doubt, of her experience as a documentary filmmaker for PBS, National Geographic and the like. The collection's best stories depict the intersection of the human world and the natural one with grace and drama. In "Senti's Last Elephant," an African safari guide introduces wealthy American tourists to the violence of the animal kingdom, to devastating effect. In other stories, she embraces (probably gleefully) what Ruskin termed the pathetic fallacy: ascribing human emotions and sympathies to the natural world. The giant tortoise of the title story, for example, possesses "a heart that had swelled insupportably from nearly two centuries of loneliness." In "Lucifer's Alligator," some denizens of an aquatic theme park become revolutionaries, turning their desire for freedom into a refusal to perform tricks or, more important, to mate. Except for readers with an enormous capacity to suspend disbelief, these fanciful conceits don't fully succeed. Still, Whitty has a fine, experienced eye whether she's writing of Tonga or Venice, the locales come alive and an equally keen ear; her prose is supple and poetic. The stories could benefit from more conflict of the human variety, but this is a solid collection that demonstrates a devotion to the natural world rarely seen in contemporary fiction. West Coast author tour. (Apr. 3)Forecast: Whitty has written and produced over 50 nature documentaries, making this the perfect handsell for Discovery Channel addicts. A witty, all-text jacket will catch the eye of more exclusively literary browsers, who may have read Whitty's work in Harper's, Ploughshares or Zoetrope.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

With inexorable momentum, like the motion of the sea, accomplished documentary filmmaker Whitty impels the stories in her first collection through historic eras and the present time, illuminating the struggles of all living things, animal and human. In the title piece, she weaves together Captain Cook and Tonga history and royalty, but the story clearly belongs to Tu'i Malila, the two-century-old tortoise, stalwart companion to generations of Tonga queens. In "The Dauguerreotype," a mother, herself unfulfilled, searches for a memento to give to a daughter who has joined the Peace Corps and is leaving for Ghana. In a Venice setting, "Stealing from the Dead" showcases an artist who falls in love with a Lord Byron scholar and arranges to paint his portrait, with a shocking result. "Senti's Last Elephant" highlights the moral dilemma of an African guide, weary of all his kills, as he leads an American family through the dangerous land of a dying male elephant. This collection of ten elegant stories is an essential purchase. Mary Szczesiul, Roseville P.L., MI
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; None edition (April 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618119809
• ISBN-13: 978-0618119806
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JULIA WHITTY's first book on oceans, The Fragile Edge, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal Award, the PEN USA Award, and the Kiriyama Prize. Her cover articles have appeared in Harper's Magazine and Mother Jones, where she is an environmental correspondent and blogger at Blue Marble.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So great and unlike anything I've read, March 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga: Stories (Paperback)

These stories are really amazing, and take you to distant places and lands. The characters are likeable and the writing is full of luminous moments and funny, quirky turns of phrase. These stories will appeal to anyone who likes good, different fiction, not just to animal lovers. Buy this!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing new writer!, March 26, 2002

By 

jill koenigsdorf (Sonoma, Ca.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga: Stories (Paperback)

A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga is that rarest of birds: a first collection of short stories that educates as well as entertains. Whitty's extensive familiarity with the natural world make each one of these stories sprout from the page and root in the mind like well-tended plants. From Antartica to Africa to Tonga Whitty carefully guides us through subtle dramas where flora, fauna, and homosapiens try to co-exist in a world that is both sad and almost unbearably hopeful. A wondrous find.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Insight, March 20, 2002

By 

Hardy Jones - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga: Stories (Paperback)

Julia Whitty is a real find - a writer who can reveal something new in something you may think you already know. Nor is she afraid to allow that animals might be conscious, feeling, emotional creatures. Many of her stories reveal the inner life of animals. While no one can really know how a tortoise or killer whale or elephant feels, there need be no alarm raised about a work of fiction that postulates that animals do feel and then imagining how they might feel and think.
A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga will set of thoughts and recognitions and if you allow them to run their course they will challenge our ethical view of all animal life.