Binstead's Safari - Softcover

Ingalls, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571299849 ISBN 13: 9780571299843

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2013

Synopsis

Academic anthropologist Stan Binstead is headed off to East Africa on sabbatical. Adulterous by nature, he's irked when his wife Millie asks to accompany him. But as the couple pass through London the balance of power in their marriage begins, strangely, to shift - a transformation that becomes yet more pronounced on safari. Sometimes considered by critics as a variation on the themes of Hemingway's 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macombe', Binstead's Safari was first published in 1983. 'The tone of the novel deepens into a psychological study of these two people and the subtle and complex ways in which the exotic environment works upon each of them . . . Ingalls' style maintains the wry grace of a sophisticated romance, a control guaranteeing that the denouement will not only be inevitable but astonishing.' Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

After a long hiatus between the publication of the near-classic Mrs. Caliban and her recent collections of novellas, I See a Long Journey and The Pearlkillers, Ingalls has produced another novel, set in the real world of white hunters but skirting the edges of superstition and myth. The reader follows folklorist Stan Binstead and his unwanted wife Millie into the bush and watches her transformation, by virtue of a new haircut and a couple of smashing outfits, from dependence to self-awareness. Millie becomes the admired center of the expedition; more significantly, she meets and falls in love with Henry Lewis, the fabled hunter about whose person has grown up precisely the lore that Stan has set out to research. Nicknamed Simba (Bantu for lion), Lewis is envied, even hated, by the other hunters, but made one of their own by the beasts of the bush, a rite of passage he transfers to the woman he has chosen. As the hunting partyfrozenlooks on, a lion materializes from the thicket of trees, glides up to Millie, as if to memorize her, then suddenly turns and streaks away. The scene glows, like a painting in primary color. Deep in the forest a dark and subtle magic is taking place, and thereby hangs this impressive tale, taut with the thrill of the hunt and the spell of the unknown.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Metamorphoses, natural and supernatural, astonish New England professor Stan Binstead in the African bush, as he researches myths of a lion god and a human bride. In tow is Millie, Stan's colorless, hopeless wife, whom he has despised and deceived throughout their marriage. As Millie radiates the beauty and vibrance of her wild surroundings, Stan realizes new passion for her, even as she realizes an alternative to Stan: a dashing safari guide. In the end, Binstead finds his lion god and loses his wife through a sacrifice neither he nor the reader expectsIngalls's trademark. Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0571299849
• ISBN 13: 9780571299843
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222