Tall & Small: Books set in the Rainforest

I was recently thrilled to be asked to take part in Penguin's blog tour celebrating the release of Anbara Salam's intense, sumptuous novel Things Bright and Beautiful.

This will also be the first in a new series on this site, Tall and Small. Here I will be picking out some brilliant pieces of adult fiction, and pairing them with novels for younger readers. These could be linked by theme, author, or a particular setting. Today I'll be looking at all things wild, with two novels set in the atmospheric rainforests- first up is Things Bright and Beautiful, followed by this month's children's pick, The Explorer, Katherine Rundell's richly told novel.

For the Tall

Things Bright and Beautiful by Anbara Salam

Set on a remote island in the Pacific, Salam's novel follows Bea and her preacher husband Max, a missionary hoping to spread the word of Christianity. Throughout the story the couple navigate the wildness of their new home, confront

sinister Devil-Chasers, and battle the gradual descent of Max's own sanity.

In Bea, Salam has created a wonderfully strong hero. While Max carries a bitter disappointment that his new home far from resembles the forest in which he spent a war, his wife provokes the attention of the island's locals in her willingness to adapt to her new life. Shaking aside her initial scepticism, her optimistic normality, demonstrated warmly through her struggle to tame the garden around her, only to be helped by a six-year-old, is a huge part of her charm. In the face of language barriers and cultural differences, she chooses to throw herself in to her life on the island, regardless of judgement.

Religion runs through the veins of Things Bright and Beautiful. Max's western Christianity conflicts with both the traditional religions of the islands residents, and the new interpretation of God and the Bible which he encounters. Exorcisms and rituals become commonplace in Max's new life, sweeping up in a tide of paranoia, triggering his own creeping madness.

Yet what is most striking about this novel is Salam's rich, intricate setting. In choosing to set her novel in an environment of such vibrancy, the author set herself a huge challenge. Yet she brings the world of the island to life impeccably, as we can see in this short extract:

The jungle. Its constant whirring noises, its fetid organic complexity, its restlessness. So many thousands of trees and bushes and leaves, each populated by slithering, crawling insects, ass with tiny hearts pumping and pumping.

The novel hurtles between moments of extreme isolation and inescapable chaos, and while there are moments of calm tenderness between the couple, these are outweighed by the suffocating claustrophobia which seeps through the novel. Early on we are told of the few electrics on the island, and the failure of Max's transistor radio- the couple are alone, with little access to the outside world. At times it is as if the jungle is closing in on us: the constricting nature of the jungle, and the suffocating atmosphere of the human relationships hovers on every page. Whether is is Bea's attempts to shake of her past, the couple's stifling lodger, or an escaping fieldworker, the novel is littered with a desperation to escape, creating a novel difficult to put down.

For the Small

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

Winner of the Costa Prize for Children's Fiction, The Explorer tells the story of four children who are stranded in a rainforest after a crash. Like Salam's novel, Rundell's evocative depiction of the jungle creates a wrold in which young readers can absorb themselves in. We join the children as they battle snakes, scale trees and attempt to survive on a diet of insects and leaves. The dangers of the jungle leap out at us, with the children encountering a new threat with each day that passes.

This is a novel for the curious reader, told in the vein of traditional adventure stories. A celebration of the Golden, and morally dubious, age of British Exploration, we are swept up in a world of ancient ruins and global travel. This will undoubtedly leave readers eager to start their own journey of discovery.

While Salam's novel tackles the concept of enforcing religion onto a new, and often unwilling, community, Rundell uses her story to explore the concept of the damage done by Colonialists and Explorers. Through the central character of Fred, we learn about the often fatal consequences of British exploration upon the local communities of rainforests. In addition Rundell draws into question the immorality of removing artefacts and possessions in order to claim evidence of travel. While she brilliantly tackles an important, and ongoing, issue, Rundell skilfully avoids moralising, instead leaving it to her young readers to decide what is right.

Tomorrow the book tour will continue over on Jaffa Reads Too. If you're looking for more thoughts on Things Bright and Beautiful be sure to head over to the other bloggers taking part. See below for details