Literary magic realism is most successful when real settings reveal the mysterious behind the ordinary. But what happens when a profoundly mythological place is embellished with whimsy, especially when the place is England's much-visited site of imprisonment and bloodshed, the Tower of London.
Julia Stuart's The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise is determined to make one of the most famously grisly historical legends intimate and charming. Set within the walls of that creaking, moaning prison and armoury on the River Thames, this novel coasts on our fascination with its aura of accusation and treason.
But this is not a historical tale. The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise takes place in the present day, the now of intransigent tourists and spoiled ravens and gruff Yeoman Warders who can hardly stuff themselves into their famously uncomfortable Beefeater uniforms.
Yes, the Beefeaters do continue to live within the precincts of the Tower, serving as official tour guides, and yes, the ravens that enjoy the run of the place are spoiled and rather nasty birds. Stuart's attempt to combine current reality with the ghostly past is a brilliant premise, if uneasily met.
The central character, Yeoman Warder Balthazar Jones, drags himself from day to day trying to grapple with the death of his 11-year-old son. His wife, Hebe, works in the lost-and-found department of the London Underground. There, she reunites absent-minded people with abandoned umbrellas, handbags and books, as well as stranger objects such as false eyes and funeral urns. Their marriage is buckling under the weight of unacknowledged grief and guilt when a new challenge arises.
Balthazar owns a 181-year-old tortoise, Mrs. Cook, a fact that convinces Her Majesty that he would be a good man to oversee her newest idea - that the Tower of London once again serve as public menagerie, home to the animals presented to her as gifts.
Ever wonder what happened to the two black beavers that Canada gave Her Majesty in 1970? They reappear here, along with a golden snub-nosed monkey named Sarah Ferguson, a Zorilla, a Komodo dragon, an Etruscan shrew and a pair of lovebirds.
The Tower was traditionally home to the Royal Menagerie, which included a Norwegian polar bear that fished in the Thames; and the lions of the Lion Tower, removed in 1835 after one took a bite out of a soldier. The price of admission to the menagerie was once three half pence, the cost of a cat or dog to be fed to the lions for lunch.
But The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise is less a story of zoological innovation than a masque of characters strutting an unusual stage. This Tower is always dismal and damp. The occupants cannot get their personal furniture to fit against the round walls. To add to their perpetual discomfort, they are haunted by both thwarted desires and apparitions with desires of their own.
Septimus Drew, the Tower chaplain, finds relief in writing steamy erotica. The eponymous Ravenmaster is overly fond of dalliances with women. Ruby Dore, the barmaid who runs the Tower's pub (deliciously called "Rack and Ruin"), is pregnant and does not know what to do about her state.
These eccentrics are accompanied by a host of rats; the sacred but nasty ravens; and a daily invasion of inquisitive tourists who treat the homes of the warders as picnic sites and who pose questions "of infinite idiocy."
In this contemporary area, Stuart is remarkably funny, and the most successful aspect of the novel is her depiction of prowling tourists. In one day, Balthazar is asked "in which tower Princess Diana had been kept following her divorce, whether he was an actor, and if the crown jewels, which had been on public display at the Tower since the 17th century, were real."
Stuart is obviously fascinated by the multiple histories that inhabit the tower, and her research flavours the novel well. But combining Beefeaters, a menagerie and ghosts with the personal story of Balthazar and his wife is too much. Larded by extravagant invention, the story becomes droll and outlandish, so determined to be entertaining that it fails.
In short, Stuart does not know when to stop, when to rely on the richness of her subject and to present it simply. The result is a mixed success, charming but overembroidered.
That complaint aside, The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise is the kind of book that armchair historians will enjoy for its allusive setting. Happily resolved despite its gloomy precincts and the ghosts that inevitably haunt such potent environs, it can be forgiven its excesses.
Aritha van Herk lives and writes in Calgary, which is less realist than magical.