 Where the Serpent Lives, Little, Brown, £12.99
“Magical” - Time Out Mumbai
“A nature lover’s delight… compelling, acute, lyrical, surprisingly readable. She has done for the forests of Karnataka and Bengal what Amitav Ghosh did for the Sundarbans in The Hungry Tide” - India Today
"A novel you will not lightly forget. Only Emily Brontë has embraced Padel's radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life." Guardian
"An intensely readeable parable of love and fear." Daily Mail ***
"Evocative depictions of life in the fast-degrading forests of India. an almost apocalyptic picture of the ways in which the world's wild animals are being endangered not only by the greed of criminals but also by the peasant's desperate search for sustenance in economies interested only in development." Independent
"A journey of discovery, stylishly told." Sunday Express
"Mystery in moments that focus on a family of foxes in Rosamund's garden, a gecko in her father's study, a badger sett near Irena's house; a sense of the wordless world of animals watching humans.' Times Literary Supplement
"Padel's prose shines" Observer
"I finished in a rush because I found it so gripping. The way all the other creatures live their lives alongside us humans, mostly unseen, is wonderfully original," Gillian Beer
“A spell-binding read, dense, luminous and true" Oxford Times
"A rich, playful style that fizzles with sensory detail, an evocative journey from urban paralysis to near-mythical Bengal’. Sunday Business Post, Ireland
"Padel is a damn good story teller", Open Media Network, India
'The prose glitters on the page in this story of a woman's journey of rediscovery to the jungles of India, the land where she grew up.' Vogue
"A gripping investigation of love and terror." Andrew O'Hagan
WHERE THE SERPENT LIVES
"I finished Where the Serpent Lives in a rush, because I found it so gripping. I love the lateral scope of the book: the way all the other creatures living their lives alongside us humans, mostly unseen, are so completely present in Padel's telling. I thought that was wonderfully original and went deep down into the book's organisation as well as its language." Literary crtic Gillian Beer
"He who understand baboon would do more toward metaphysics than Locke," wrote Ruth Padel’s 's great-great-grandfather. Charles Darwin noted the compulsions he shared with his dog to laugh, yawn, whine, for "we are the offspring of common parents". Evolutionary theory would challenge the apartheid that separates human and animal. Since we are not sole tenants of this planet, does it follow that our culture should recognise the baboon's subjectivity, the dog's-eye view? Should novels code people as animals, animals as people? In her first novel, a quest for origins and self-discovery, Padel takes narrative and characterisation into the animal world. It opens with a postpartum female king cobra; we observe with microscopic eye "a luminous ant . . . mites like red full stops, sampling her interstitial skin"; a bird, a tree shrew, a leopard's paw print.
Wildlife teems in every corner; if animals are not immediately present, they figure as objects of thought or as metaphor – cheetahs, rusty spotted cats, mongeese, bees, a dhole.
The true power and delicacy of Eros are displaced into the empathic gaze of the narrator towards the creaturely world. Perhaps the most successful character is Rosamund's son, Russel (named, at the request of her zoologist father, after the evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace). The death of his dog, Bono, is beautifully rendered. When careless humans leave the main door open, a fox gets in and the dog gets out. The tenor is sombre, the writing clear and plain. Bono is run over; it is the boy's first lesson about death, and Russel wrongly blames himself. His guilt and grief, combined with his hurt rage against his father's promiscuities, are touchingly rendered; and, as it was through the suffering of animals that he became estranged, so it is by helping animals that he is healed. Only Emily Brontë, to whom nature was "an inexplicable problem, existing on a principle of destruction", has embraced Padel's radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life. Where the Serpent Lives is a novel you will not lightly forget." Guardian
"At the novel's centre is Rosamund, trapped in a "Gorgon spell" of inaction, unable to confront her husband, reach her son, or help herself. The novel spans a single, life-altering year, splicing Rosamund's story with those of her friend Irena, Irena's husband Richard, a snake expert in India, and Anka, a Croatian singer. Padel's poet's eye lights on the way a fox's coat "shines like conkers, fresh-split;" her sense of rhythm has her switching effortlessly between locations and perspectives. An intensely readeable parable of love and fear." Daily Mail
"The sexy husband is a frightful and fascinating creation" Times
"A rich, playful style that fizzles with sensory detail. It succeeds as an experimental novel, an evocative, lushly realised journey from urban paralysis to the freedom of near-mythical Bengal’. Sunday Business Post, Ireland
"Relating human sentiments through the prism of animal behaviour is a tricky narrative device and could easily hit a false note. But Padel's prose shines." Observer
"Such is the author’s fascination with her subject that I almost began to find snakes beautiful. The snake of the title may refer to the childhood home, the unfaithful husband, or indeed the very essence of the individual within all of us. This is a journey of discovery, stylishly told." Sunday Express ****
"Evocative depictions of life in the fast-degrading forests of India. Padel has a real feel for nature but is not just a nature-lover of the traditional kind. She paints an almost apocalyptic picture of the ways in which the world's wild animals are being endangered not only by the greed of criminals but also by the peasant's desperate search for sustenance in economies interested only in development." Independent
'The prose glitters on the page in this story of a woman's journey of rediscovery to the jungles of India, the land where she grew up.' Vogue
"Where the Serpent Lives moves between a tangle of human relationships and an environment under threat. Writing about nature, she brings a poet’s intensity to her prose: objects, plants, and the wildlife that stalk her pages, are all fiercely observed. Her narrative spirals like a tropical plant, luxuriant with metaphor and imagery.
She examines her serpents with a scientist’s rigour but a spellbound eye, passionately curious about arcane, intriguing detail. Devon has the most savage episode in the book: a shockingly violent scene of badger-baiting. On English soil, shamingly, suffering is inflicted for ‘fun’. In the jungle, elephants and tigers are under threat from poachers, forests felled for financial gain; corruption and uncaring officialdom result in habitats lost, species disappearing. India’s jungle brings about change for all the characters and Padel pulls the reader into the heart of it. Nature is her forte and in the wild she sings her best song." Spectator
" I didn't want to stop reading once I'd started, mainly because of Padel's fiercely brilliant way of noticing. She has a great sense of myth and an exquisite way of telling a story. From the wilds of Buxa Forest to little interiors of Kilburn, her first novel seeks to classify the power of living things. Indeed, they all have life and not a few of them have venom.’ Andrew O’ Hagan
"A novel combining a deal of information and observation. Her brisk intelligence darts through the narrative as quickly as a serpent’. Irish Times
"Padel is a talented wordsmith and observer of the natural world" The Lady
"She writes thrillingly - the extraordinary nature of the king cobra, the intense, heady, sensory jungle are wonderful subjects for a poet’s pen. A picture is slowly painted of its million years of evolution, its ancient, extraordinary otherness. The novel is full of shocking statistics about wildlife losses across the world but Padel never preaches. Her voice rings with passion and authority." The Tablet
|
