Wow. The book meanders and teases, and then it grows taut, and then it snaps like a noose. The action is strange and vague for pages on end and then suddenly a fog lifts, and everything becomes brilliantly clear for just a moment; and for just a moment a character sees, really sees, what is important to her or him; and then the clarity dissipates again into a fog. Strange repeating motifs take shape at the edges of every scene. Wild animals. Conversations. Paintings. Hot air balloons. Dead brothers. Lost loves. There is a story here, but the book is more of a mood than a story, or maybe it's a couple of moods--a book of dueling feelings--of what Stan feels; of what Stan's wife Millie feels. The dialog is full of yearning, sadness, missed opportunity, and unspoken things. It's a book about greed and death. About mortality and belief. It's far more open-ended and mysterious than Ingalls's [b:Mrs. Caliban|34377087|Mrs. Caliban|Rachel Ingalls|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488557112s/34377087.jpg|277087]. The only thing I'm sure about is that Ingalls loved these characters very much: their flawed humanity shines out. It's a strange book and I loved it. ( )

The Binsteads, Stan and Millie, from New England, are going on a safari. Stan is a professor of folklore and he has a secondary quest (to shooting animals) which is to find out more about a particular legend -- of a man who can shapechange into a lion -- . Their marriage is moribund, and one guesses that a couple in their late thirties, married awhile, with no children that this is the issue. Only it is and it isn't. Everything in this novel is and isn't. The Binsteads get to London and Stan, a philanderer, goes off with a friend and leaves Millie on her own. She falls in love with London and begins to come to life. They get to Africa and it is Millie who thrives there, to such a degree that Stan sees her afresh and remembers why he fell in love with her, albeit in a most self-centered and condescending manner. Ok -- but what I am writing does not convey that atmosphere of this tale -- for this is a tale about how we each make our own legends and tales and then live them, how we can be, once the enactment has fully gotten underway (or maybe never) are helpless to play out the stories we are drawn to even when we think we don't really believe them, that we're just interested. Stories are not only about the past, but shape the future. The setting is non-specific as is the time -- I would hazard the fifties as the story is rampant with white people in charge, but again, it is carefully non-specific as a fable should be. A final word? Here be lions. ****1/2 ( )