The Lioness Over-Populated but a Heat-Pounding Thrill

 

THE LIONESS (2022)

By Chris Bohjalian 

Doubleday, 315 pages 

★★★ 1/2 

 

  

Chris Bohjalian isn’t the most literary novelist in the land, but he's certainly one of our finest storytellers. He does deep dives into background research, a talent he honed when he wrote for the Burlington Free Press back in the 1980s–before Gannett bled it and other dailies dry to divert their assets into Useless Today.

 

This time Bohjalian takes us back to the hair-trigger Cold War in the early 1960s as it played out in East Africa. Weddings gone wrong are so overdone as to have become cliché, but The Lioness is about a honeymoon gone so far off the rails that Hades would have seemed a relative paradise. It also sandpapers the sheen from varnished celebrity.

 

Popular actress Katie Barstow tied the knot with gallery owner David Hill and invited her peeps along on a destination honeymoon before that was a thing. Who could resist a luxury guided safari to Kenya? The guest list included her agent and her publicist, Peter Merrick and Reggie Stout respectively, but also three of her closest friends: actress Carmen Tedesco, African American actor Terrance Dutton, and screenwriter Felix Demeter. Katie's older brother Billy Stepanov, a self-help psychologist, and his pregnant wife Margie are also on the A-list. Everyone loves Katie; even though she and Billy were badly treated by their theatre parents, Katie is kind, confident, and bubbly–a mighty mite whose qualities evoke images of Veronica Lake.

 

Katie’s honeymoon is a let's-look-at-some-wild-animals adventure. Charlie Patton and his crew at Safari Adventures know where to find them, but caution everyone that the savannah is a place where the dead are eaten, not carried home. This is the setup for several jeep loads of circumstances that bump us between East Africa and Hollywood. Most of the book is set in the years1961-64, with flashbacks to childhood and a leap forward to a 2022 coda. In the 1960s, colonialism was collapsing across Africa, but borning independence was not a painless delivery. The fracturing of the Belgian Congo, threats of war between Kenya and the former German Tanganyika, untold numbers of rival tribes, and hostilities in Rwanda (!) made Africa an overripe fruit to be plucked during tit-for-tat Cold War proxy battles between the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

Patton respected lions, hyenas, leopards, crocodiles, and snakes, but he feared Americans and Russians: 

           

... they all scare me a hell of a lot more then pissed off rhinos and ornery lions. The rhinos know we are a threat and the lions have learned we can be very risky prey .... But the Russians and Americans? We are just pawns on the chess board. Harmless and expendable.

 

Consider that remark foreshadowing. Nationalist chaos, global anxiety, Yankee tourists, celebrities, and not-so-buried Western spook activity have all the markings of a hostage situation. But who are the kidnappers? They mockingly assume the noms de guerre of American astronauts Grissom, Glenn, Shepard, and Cooper and sound Russian, but who can be sure? What are the chances your abductors won't kill you once they collect their demanded ransom? When do you decide to take direct action and what should it be? What are the consequences of failure? Or, indeed, of success so far from settled civilization? 

 

Bohjalian educates his readers yet hides didacticism inside a novelistic structure that sucks us into the drama. Who is the titular lioness? I changed my mind several times before that identity was confirmed! Bohjalian also cleverly appropriates Cold War spy novel tropes such as agents, double agents, moles, and compromised loyalties. He overlays early 1960s norms of masculinity and femininity and what could be justified in the name of patriotism.

 

This is an ambitious novel, overly so in my estimation. Because Bohjalian has stuffed a lot of characters into a 315-page book, some by necessity must become sacrificial lambs. He similarly telegraphs other outcomes, another casualty of overpopulation. I am less charitable when he slips from early 60s norms and drifts into those of today.

 

To toss my critic’s hat in the closet, I doubt the above critique will matter to most readers. Bohjalian is simply a masterful spinner of yarns; tell a spell-bounding story and your audience is too invested to notice holes in the literary fabric. Call The Lioness a classic page-turner.

 

Rob Weir