The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise

At first I thought this was another one of those quaint novels featuring wacky English eccentrics. After all, it's about a man named Balthazar Jones of all things. He's one of those retired soldiers who works at the Tower of London, the ones we know as Beefeaters. His Greek wife Hebe works in the London subway's lost-and-found, and they live in the Tower with their 104-year-old tortoise. He collects rain samples; she find that annoying. How cute. Then I read the bit about how their only son died under mysterious circumstances some years before the novel opens and how they have been unable to discuss it or support each other through the tragedy. Not so cute.Still, "The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise" does a remarkable job of handling that material without bogging down into soap opera territory. This brings us back to that English eccentricity; I wonder if such a story could be set anywhere other than England and still retain that lightness of touch. With all due respect, for instance, how serious can a story possibly be when so many of the main characters dress in that outfit? It looks like some designer got a job in a clown-costume factory and couldn't quite remember where to put the accordion pleats. (Just take a look at the nearest bottle of Beefeater gin if you're not sure what I'm talking about - that's the dress uniform, but the daily uniform looks like a sort of depressed version of the same getup.)Besides the clothing, the story also includes a clergyman who writes romance novels in his spare time, the man who spends his days taking care of the Tower's collection of ravens, the lost-and-found's other employee who alleviates her boredom by trying on the false beards people have left on the trains, and a few dozen other oddballs. Then you take another look and realize that they're all, without exception, looking for love. That's a nice touch from the author, who presents us with a genuinely loving couple in crisis as her main characters.At which point we learn that the Queen has decided to restart an ancient tradition by moving all her exotic animals - the ones that foreign leaders have presented to her - from London Zoo to the Tower. She wants to have the Beefeaters set up a menagerie on the Tower grounds, like the one that used to be there in previous centuries. And on top of all his other problems, who gets to take care of these animals and birds? Balthazar, that's who. Well, a man needs a hobby.If there's a weakness to this novel it's that from this point onward, the outcome is pretty much of a foregone conclusion. Just about all the characters are people of good will, and we all know what happens to people of good will in a romantic comedy, no matter how many obstacles they have to get through. This is a quirky, touching, sometimes moving romantic comedy - there's a child's death involved, for goodness' sake - but a romantic comedy nonetheless.The author intelligently loaded in some structural weight to balance the lightness of her materials. Most noticeably, everyone in this story has some connection to the Tower of London, and that shared background provides the characters with some dimension, some life outside of the romance machinery. They didn't just drift into this story by coincidence; they were there already. A romance, like any fiction, is an artifice, but things like the common setting make this one seem more natural.Another structural stroke that lends this confection some weight is Hebe's activities on behalf of the London subway's lost-and-found. She and her colleague don't just collect lost objects and take advantage of them - reading the books and diaries, trying on the clothes, trying to open the safe - they also look for the owners and return the things. Some of the people they encounter in this endeavor have stories of their own to tell and contributions of their own to make. They even have something to say about what's happened to Balthazar and Hebe.Still, although this novel is more than a piece of cotton candy, it remains a romantic comedy. On the other hand, "Pride and Prejudice" is also a romantic comedy. What makes that one great, and this one good?In the end, of course, you'll have to figure that out for yourself - there may even be those among you who think that "The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise" is great and "Pride and Prejudice" good, although if that's your opinion you and I are going to have to discuss sports or television shows rather than literature when we meet. My sense is that the respective quality of this novel and others has to do with a couple of things, plausibility and imagination.Ms. Stuart has done a very fine job in this work, but no one really lives like her characters - even, I suspect, the real Yeoman Warders of the Tower. The greatest danger they face is sadness; painful but bearable. The characters in "Pride and Prejudice" face the real possibility of homelessness. Those in "Tom Jones" face public humiliation or domestic violence. Those in "Catch-22" face actual death. All very funny, partly because the stakes are so high. As has been said before, when someone in a silent movie slips on a banana peel, it's funny because you can't see the bruises, but you know the bruises are there. This novel doesn't quite reach that level.But let's not take that whole business too seriously. All it really means is that "The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise" isn't a classic. Not yet, anyway - only time will tell. Meanwhile, this novel is very funny, often moving, and in the end triumphant. Wait until you learn, in the last line, what that tortoise accomplishes.Benshlomo says, If it bends, it's funny - if it breaks, it's not.

A fun read with intertwining storylines and written in a quirky syntax that will have you marveling at word choice.

(Don't read the fourth paragraph here if you do not want to know the end of the book.) In a review of this book, the reviewer noted that she did not find the first half charming, but instead plodding, and that the many historical facts were interesting, but felt forced into place. She found the second half of the book “more uplifting…and satisfying.” I tend to agree that I had difficulty getting immersed into this book and I did need to get to about midway before I became emotionally invested in the outcome. However, the characters and story have stuck with me and by the end I was taken in and kept thinking about the book.Take away the aspects of the title – Tower, zoo, and tortoise – from the story and one is left with four relationship/love vignettes - stories as old as time. The first is the story of Balthazar and Hebe Jones – two people who are still very much in love after years of marriage, but who are dealing with a tragic loss of their only child Milo in different ways, and who now have difficulty communicating to each other. Hebe has the sense that Balthazar has recovered from the grief (he has never really cried) and in fact perhaps never loved their son very deeply because all he cares about is catching rain drops in perfume bottles. Hebe has become cold to Balthazar and he is unable to communicate with her. The second relationship story is that of Rev. Septimus Drew and Ruby Dore – a long-time bachelor reverend who writes erotica under a pen name and tries to stop rats from overtaking and destroying his chapel and a lovely barmaid at the Tower’s Rack & Ruin who finds she is pregnant by a one-night stand. Until near the end of the book, this is a story of unrequited love as Drew pines for Ruby without her realizing how much he cares for her. The third love story is of Valerie Jennings and Arthur Catnip – she a goofy colleague of Hebe’s at London’s Underground Lost Property Office and Catnip a ticket inspector. These two deal with their inferiority complexes – Valerie with her weight issue and eccentricities and Arthur with his “limited height”. The fourth relationship story is centered on the Ravenmaster, his various lovers, and his wife. Each of these stories is a slice of real life and has been written in fiction many times. However, Stuart handles the interweaving of the story lines through the uniqueness of the location and the absurdity of some of the characters, their actions, and situations. I think this is a hallmark of British humor. Think of Monty Python or A Fish Called Wanda.But I do not think Stuart uses these methods just to bring in whimsy, comic relief, or ridiculousness, though that is part of her reasoning. I sense she is trying to use symbolism and say something about life. For example, Balthazar can’t stop his obsession with collecting some rain drops in special perfume bottles until he actually sheds real tear drops for the loss of his son. Hebe can’t move on and forgive her husband until she finds someone (Tom Cotton) with whom she can talk about Milo’s death and until she can return the lost ashes in an urn to a loved one. Note that Stuart purposely has Hebe working at the “Underground Lost Property Office” because Hebe is a lost soul herself who feels some comfort laying in a magician’s box (not unlike a coffin). Then of course there is the “zoo” – the albatross that mates for life, but that has been taken away from its mate – not unlike Balthazar or Rev. Drew who both suffer and pine for the respective woman they love. There is also the female love bird that savaged its mate – not unlike the animosity of the Ravenmaster and his wife.I’m sure if I kept thinking about it, there are many other reasons why Stuart included certain characters (such as the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh) or animals, such as the parrot, the ravens, and of course, the tortoise, and why Stuart placed characters in certain situations. I don’t think her choices were strictly for the goofiness or the laughs. The reviewer mentioned earlier did not feel the same note of hope at the end that she felt after reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book to which The Tower is often compared, but I disagree with that criticism. I thought Stuart left us with a great deal of hope – Hebe and Balthazar reunite, Rev. Drew and Ruby Dore and Valerie and Arthur begin or continue their respective relationships, both the ravens and the Ravenmaster get their punishment, and the animals are brought back to their habitats at the zoo. And of course, the longest-living tortoise, missing throughout much of the book, triumphantly returns.

I absolutely loved this book. My normal reading diet is dominated by crime thrillers, spy novels and adventure stories. For the sake of variety I make myself read a book outside these genres every 4th book. This was one of those 4th books.The story involves an improbable cast of characters (the inhabitants of the Tower of London) most of whom are emotionally stuck. The central characters are a couple struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of their only son. Weaved around the central story are this separate threads of the secondary characters which include the vicar of the Tower's chapel, the landlady of the Tower's pub, a tattoed ticket inspector and a work colleague at the London Underground Lost Property office, all of whom are searching for love in their lonely lives.The novel is written in a feather light and humorous style. The author's choice of the improbable setting of the Tower of London and the plot device of the introduction of a menagerie are strokes of genius that provide the perfect backdrop for the chief protagonist, Balthazar Jones, to act out his grief as he marches the battlements in the dead of night and display his humanity in his generous treatment of his animal charges. Similarly his wife, Hebe's, job at the London Underground Lost Property office offers her the perfect tonic to her own troubles as against all odds she successfully reunites people with their long lost treasures.This book had me smiling, chuckling and laughing out loud all the way through until the final two pages when I cried my eyes out. A wonderful shot of whimsical joy in these troubled times!

It's a feel good book

I had only read "The Matchmaker of Pèrigord" by Julia Stewart and found it marvellously funny, but "The Tower ... was unexpectedly 'noir' and so saddening.

Lovely reading!

This is a wonderful, whimsical account of life in the Tower of London. The characters are warm and well developed, and the stories are poignant. Great humour. The historical facts are woven well into tales.