Book Review - Classic #2 - Green Mansions

If you have never heard of the book Green Mansions and didn't know it was a classic, you're not alone. Neither did I before I saw it on my library's "We Recommend" table. It certainly looked old and, on a whim, I checked it out. After looking up the title on Amazon.com and Goodreads, I realized it was, indeed, a classic and thought I'd add a lesser known, or forgotten title to my list of twenty. You know, step outside the box. Maybe help shed some light on a great old book.

Well, classics are classics for a reason and there is a reason this book has been forgotten. It's not very good. In fact, I may as well say it. It's bad.

Abel, a member of the aristocratic class of Venezuela, flees to the uncivilized jungles after a failed coup. Because he is able to pick up languages easily, he learns to communicate and eventually live among several different indigenous tribes. Just like any great guest, he spends his time wowing them with his guitar, waits for his meals while he hangs out in his hammock and laughs at their silly traditions. Eventually, driven by boredom, he explores a cursed part of the forest where he eventually meets an unusual girl unlike any one he's ever seen. She seems able to talk to birds and snakes, climbs trees and appears to live all alone in her "green mansion." Most interesting to Abel is the paleness of her white skin, noticeably different from the savages (his words) that inhabit this area. Rima, as she is called by a spanish speaking man who raised her, is the last surviving member of an extinct tribe. How she came to live with him is more complicated than I care to explain, as William Henry Hudson unravels her origins in an excruciatingly slow discovery, but suffice it to say that when Rima and Abel fall in love, it spells doom for both of them.

While there is the romance, which is actually unsatisfying because it follows that melodramatic pattern of 19th century romanticism where there seems to be no passion accompanied with the unexplained devotion, this book is really more about the forest than the girl. Hudson uses most of his words to describe every tree, every vine, and every undergrowth. It becomes ridiculous to think that he is really including these mind-numbing descriptive details in his explanation of his tragic past to his friend.

In addition to the superfluous language, the book is unforgivably racist and outdated. I kept wondering why I was being less forgiving than I was with, say, A Town Like Alice, which also exposes its age with its no longer acceptable prejudices. All I can say is that Alice at least redeems itself with its other, better qualities. Green Mansions doesn't. Its attitude towards the aboriginals of Venezuela, as described by a superior white man, is blatantly offensive. Uncomfortably so.

Skip it. There's really no reason to read this book.