The Jungle Law
Price: $25.00
December 17, 2008.
An Invitation Into Another Lifetime.
Rating: 5Victoria Vinton, whose stories have appeared in a variety of publications including "Prairie Schooner" and "Sewanee River", has a gem of a first novel in The Jungle Law. Using what has been described as a literary footnote, Vinton has crafted an imaginative, engaging tale of Rudyard Kipling and a small neighbor boy, and the exchanges between them which led to the very famous Kipling work, The Jungle Book.
In an effort to escape increasing fame, Kipling moved his then pregnant wife to Vermont in the late nineteenth century. It is in the backdrop of the rural Vermont countryside that VInton introduces us to Kipling, his wife and their nearest neighbors, the Connellys. Young Joe Connelly's lively imagination helps to spark some of the details that any Jungle Book fan would readily recognize. Many of the characteristic mannerisms of the Jungle Book's "man-child" Mowgli are descriptions of Joe at play with Kipling urging the boy to imagine he is the man-child being raised by jungle animals.
Vinton weaves the story of young Joe Connelly through the story of the Kiplings in Vermont, but the strongest thread in her tale is that of the evolution of The Jungle Book.
Kipling spent part of his early life in Bombay. His family was filled with eccentric members whose stories infused a love of words and storytelling into the impressionable and imaginative Kipling. A move to England catapulted the writer into a literary mecca where he kept company with many notables. Because his privacy was far more important to him than fame, he moved to rural Vermont in the hopes of finding a place where he and his Daemon (the equivalent of his muse) would be able to take the seeds of a story and see it through to its end. The roots of those story seeds were in his days in Bombay. It is from the Hindi names for various jungle beasts that Kipling gave names to his Jungle Book characters: Baloo, the bear; Bagheera, the panther; Tabaqui, the jackal. Drawing from his imagined man-child's movements, he assigns the name Mowgli from the Hindi term for Little Frog.
In the jungle, there is an unspoken law by which the beasts abide. This law--The Jungle Law--becomes the backdrop for the lessons the jungle beasts present to Mowgli. The Law was "a set of rules and protocols that all the animals followed in order to live peaceably side by side, in relative good faith and order." In truth, it is in the tradition of the Law that Kipling and Joe both live among their family members and friends. The friendship between the two is, in many ways, as unlikely as Mowgli being raised by jungle animals and schooled in jungle law. Yet, their friendship is what gives voice to that man-child, his jungle family, and the simple laws of life which provide a framework for peaceful living among others.
Vinton paints word pictures as vivid as the film version of The Jungle Book. In doing so, she thrusts her readers into the nineteenth century life of Rudyard Kipling and into the mind of a creative soul developing one of his finest works. Opening the pages of this book is like opening an invitation into another lifetime, some other place, and some other realm--the realm of make-believe where those who believe can make anything seem real.
by Lee Ambrose
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing Books by, for, and about women
December 14, 2006.
Disappointing.
Rating: 2The descriptions were lovely but seemed to be the raison d'etre for the book. I kept thinking it would get better. If I hadn't bought it on CD I would have abandoned it quite early on. Characters were not engaging and seemed unapproachable. I thought it might have been the reader at first but I don't think so. Kipling seemed a caricature of himself.
December 05, 2006.
Fails to live up to expectations.
Rating: 3Everyone seems to be raving about this book. The premise is terrific -- Kipling's interactions with a neighboring Vermont farming family. However, I just couldn't develop a sense of sympathy with any of the characters. I want to like Kipling because I like his work. I want to like Joe (the boy who befriends Rudyard Kipling) because his life is hard. Nevertheless, I don't really like these characters - or care much about them. It saddens me because I really wanted to like the book as well.
December 30, 2005.
This is a lovely book..
Rating: 5THE JUNGLE LAW by Victoria Vinton brings the author Rudyard Kipling to life -- fictional life, that is, as Vinton presents her interpretation of what may have happened when Kipling and his wife, Caroline, moved to Vermont in 1892. It was there that Caroline bore a child and Kipling developed the character Mowgli of The Jungle Books. Now, this is beautiful literature.
Vinton invents the Connollys, neighbors for the Kiplings: Joe, a boy of 11; his mother, who does the Kiplings' laundry; and Joe's jealous, abusive father. The adults are kept apart by class barriers, but Kipling and the boy become friends.
For Joe, Kipling's house "is like a marvelous treasure trove, filled with all sorts of riches." And when Kipling talks, it's exciting, colorful and lyrical. Joe is fascinated by him. Kipling introduces his young neighbor to the Law of the Jungle and to the world of wonder inside his own mind.
The book centers around their relationship, but it's really about imagination -- the glorious treasures inside Kipling's head and the boy's budding curiosity about ideas and possibilities. In the midst of his mean, hard life, the boy daydreams about Kipling's travel tales. His dreams become grander and his mind becomes more free -- and his father hates the result.
Her characters are complex and she evokes vivid emotions, but it's Vinton's language that is simply gorgeous, with lush images. The book is a pleasure to read: "Light falls through the trees in bright dapples, glancing off the fruit in the trees and the wings of the monarchs that flutter and perch on the Queen Anne's lace by the roadside." Pondering the differences between India and Vermont, Kipling "knew right away that here was a place where he could concentrate and work, if only because it was so different from the India he'd known, where the seasons went from wet to dry and the dead never seemed to stay dead and the walls of gardens were set with old bones and vultures were as common as crows."
Ooh, this is a lovely book -- a graceful read, a perfect fit for the reader who loves to be in the company of splendid language.
December 09, 2005.
(4.5) "The night has gotten into his head...".
Rating: 4The unusual friendship between Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and an impressionistic neighbor boy, Joe Connelly, is the crux of Kipling's Jungle Books in Vinton's imaginative tale. In 1892, the newly transplanted writer has settled in Vermont to build his dream house, inspired to write without the exotic distractions of India. Forming the skeleton of his new tale, Kipling finds both landscape and boy a source of inspiration: "The cold and the snow were like a revelation, with stark and unspoiled purity he'd never beheld before... here was a place where he could work... where the seasons went from wet to dry and the dead never seemed to stay dead."
Joe's imagination is caught by Kipling's words, the tale of the boy, Mowgli, yet forming in the author's mind. With Joe as inspiration, man and boy confer, Kipling sharing the bits of adventure yet to be written, the boy taking ownership, ignited by such freedom, the color and warmth of India, the lush jungle so different from the icy scene of Vermont. Reaching into the Vermont landscape, Kipling builds Mowgli's world, peopled with all its enchantments, dreaming Joe into the verdant fantasy, while the boy's parents watch their son with chagrin, determined to recapture him. The two families could not be more different, yet Kipling and Joe form a bond that transcends circumstances in Vinton's fictionally believable account of a creative endeavor and a budding friendship. The prose is striking, contrasting the stark Vermont countryside with the India of Kipling's youth, the tales of Scheherazade and the burgeoning adventure of a boy raised by wolves.
Joes' father, Jack, is an Irishman come to America to escape the famine, almost killed while working on the railroad, now toiling on his own small farm for meager sustenance. A man burdened by disappointment, the ideals he once nurtured dashed by the reality of hard labor, Jack finds solace in his jug at night, but the drink turns him bitter, shamed that his wife, Addie, does washing and ironing for their strange neighbors, the Kipling's. Jack doesn't trust Kipling, views him the same as the wealthy landowners who passed the starving Irish peasants without a nod. What can such a man do when his son is threatened by the fascination of new ideas, called to a world so unlike what his father can provide? In his wanderings, a conflicted Joe has come face to face with his own limitations, Kipling's words a heady drug that leads him into the dark and unforgiving night: "How foolish to think that he was heading forward... when in fact all he's done is wind his way back to another story's beginnings, one that leads only... to dull compromise and sharp regret."
Vinton has brought all together in a fierce, magical tale, filled with the intimate details of Kipling's life, his pampered childhood; his removal from the security of mother and home, placed in a hostile foster home until his mother rescues him and his sister; Kipling's friendship with Wolcott, who introduces the author to his sister, Carrie. After her brother's untimely death, Carrie marries Kipling, now pregnant with their first child. Vinton's brilliant prose introduces the reader to the inventiveness of the writer's world and the power of a fertile imagination unrestricted by geography, fashioning a compelling story from Kipling's rich history, building on the writer's life with layers of her own imaginings, the pages scattered with images that transcend time and place in the heady prose of the creative mind. Mixing fact and fancy, Vinton has indeed written her own jewel, a novel to be savored and passed along. Luan Gaines/ 2005.