by Ruth Padel
This is a very powerful book about a woman who is wallowing in an unhappy marriage. Her husband, a music promoter, claims her loves her, but keeps having affairs. The story also includes the woman whose father studies snakes in India and how he abused her psychologically as a child. The woman's best friend is married to a man who is also working in India studying snakes, this man thinks he loves the main character and often has fantasies about her. The scientists are in awe of the power and beauty of the snakes, they are frustrated about the lack of government action against poachersm, corruption and the destruction of forests in india all of which are threatening the animal populations in the country.
The woman's friend thinks that it would do the woman good to take a holiday to India to get away from her husband and "find herself". She almost has sex with the scientist who has the crush on her but the report of the attempted suicide by her son saves her from making that mistake.
The book ends with the woman's husband being killed in a car crash, her finding a police detective to love, her friend who thought he loved her realizes he really does love his wife and the woman is reconciled with her father.... so most people live happily.... this doesn't seem to happen much in books today.
The story was interesting but it included many graphic scenes of the brutality humans inflict (poaching) on animals and the brutality in the animal kingdom, those were hard to take. But it also portrays the great devotion animials have to their offspring and the lengths they will go to defend them.. It seemed that the animals were much more caring and concerned for their offsping and families than humans are.
Is the snake imagery supposed to make us think of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve discovering sin and evil?
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