BKMT READING GUIDES
The Bestiary
by Nicholas Christopher
Hardcover : 320 pages
0 club reading this now
0 members have read this book
Xeno Atlas grows ...
Introduction
From “a writer of remarkable gifts,” “Borges with emotional weight, comes a tale that is at once a fantastical historical mystery, a haunting love story, and a glimpse into the uncanny—the quest for a long-lost book detailing the animals left off Noah’s Ark.
Xeno Atlas grows up in the Bronx, his Sicilian grandmother’s strange stories of animal spirits his only escape from the legacy of his mother’s early death and his stern father’s long absences as a common seaman. Shunted off to an isolated boarding school, with his father’s activities abroad and the source of his newfound wealth grown increasingly mysterious, Xeno turns his early fascination with animals into a personal obsession: his search for the Caravan Bestiary. This medieval text, lost for eight hundred years, supposedly details the animals not granted passage on the Ark—griffins, hippogriffs, manticores, and basilisks—the vanished remnants of a lost world sometimes glimpsed in the shadowy recesses of our own.
Xeno’s quest takes him from the tenements of New York to the jungles of Vietnam to the ancient libraries of Europe—but it is only by riddling out his own family secrets that he can hope to find what he is looking for. A story of panoramic scope and intellectual suspense, The Bestiary is ultimately a tale of heartbreak and redemption.
“Smart, entertaining ... a marvelous hybrid of intellectual quest and well-plotted adventure.... A literary thriller in which—unusually—neither “literary” nor “thriller” seems an afterthought.”—Kirkus Reviews
Excerpt
1The first beast I laid eyes on was my father.
At all hours his roars reverberated, breaking into my sleep, rattling the windows. When he entered my doorway, he filled it. That was my earliest impression: he was bigger than the door. And he came from far away, smelling of the sea, snow fringing his thick coat and woolen cap. ...
view entire excerpt...
Discussion Questions
From the Publisher:1. The hero of THE BESTIARY, Xeno Atlas, must solve the mystery of the CARAVAN BESTIARY even as he unravels the mysteries of his own life. Gradually his twin quests merge and become the great spiritual journey of his life. Did the fact that -- like most of us -- he was searching both for something magical and something very human make him an even fuller character?
2. To some degree, at various times in our lives we search for something we have lost, whether it be a person, an object, a strong passion, or even a fleeting emotion. Xeno has "lost" both his parents, his mother in childbirth, his father to the deep secrets the man harbors. Do you think it is these losses, rather than intellectual curiosity or an appetite for mystery that impel him to dedicate his life to searching for a lost book?
3. The three main characters of the novel -- Xeno, Lena, and Bruno -- are each involved with animals in different ways: Bruno with extinction; Lena with animal rights; and Xeno with the way animals populate the human imagination and help define who we are in the world. How did these three aspects of the story play off of, and enrich, one another?
4. Xeno's wartime experiences in Vietnam, and their aftermath when he is a returning, wounded veteran, are one of several times that he finds himself in "the belly of the beast." How does this make his interest in a book of beasts -- some of them quite dangerous and lethal -- all the more poignant?
5. Nicholas Christopher weaves a great many historical events and personalities into his novel: the Black Death, the Crusades, illuminated manuscripts, Gnostic heretics, ancient historians, the Knights Hospitallers, Lord Byron, Doge Andrea Dandolo. How did this use of history enliven the modern-day action of the story?
6. There are numerous locales that are central to the novel: the Bronx, Vietnam, Hawaii, Venice, Paris, Crete. What did you think of the way they were depicted, and of the details the author used to animate the action that takes place in them?
7. Lena is the great love of Xeno's life, and Nathalie is a woman with whom he is involved for less than two years. At different points in their lives, both young women are fervent political activists. What, if anythng, does this say about Xeno? Are the women similiar in other ways? And how would you otherwise contrast them?
8. How do you believe Xeno's relationships with his grandmother and Evgénia shaped him, in light of his father's neglect?"
9. Xeno adopts the Moretti family as his own, filling a huge vacuum in his own life. Discuss the complex web of relationships with Mrs. Moretti, Bruno, and most importantly, Lena, and the way it evolves over the years.
10. How did the device of Xeno's ongoing notebooks (often found in the book's footnotes, and in the Glossary), and his discovery of different imaginary animals help you to understand his quest, and the development of his character?
11. Along the way, many people assist Xeno in his quest, offering him crucial information and encouragement, notably Mr. Hood and Vartan Marczek, who also become friends, and even father figures, to Xeno. Discuss the different ways in which these two men, who share a thirst for knowledgment and is each involved in his own unique project, influence Xeno.
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
Two myths lie at the heart of The Bestiary. I encountered them thirty years apart, and they were like a chemical reaction waiting to happen. The first is a Native American myth that altered the way I looked at life, and which I incorporated whole into the body of the novel. We hear it early on from the grandmother of the hero, Xeno Atlas, a woman with a gift for communicating with animals: “Before men started their killing ways,” she tells Xeno, “they spoke the same language as all the other animals. Then the worm of cruelty burrowed into man’s heart. The animals needed to protect themselves, so they made up their own languages that only their own kind could understand.” The second myth was central to the cosmogony of the Gnostics, those early Christian heretics. It stipulated that the Holy Ghost authored two books: the Bible and the lost Book of Life, which was the first bestiary. The man who read both books in their entirety would achieve universal gnosis, ensuring the salvation and immortality of the soul. A poor boy from the Bronx who lost his mother at birth and barely knows his father, Xeno undertakes a passionate quest for the Caravan Bestiary, a book lost for eight centuries. Eventually this quest dovetails with his search for the key to his own fractured family history. My novel is built around the mysteries of Xeno’s life, in which the dynamics of his two quests run along closely parallel tracks and, inevitably—magically—converge.Book Club Recommendations
Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.
Book Club HQ to over 88,000+ book clubs and ready to welcome yours.
Get free weekly updates on top club picks, book giveaways, author events and more
