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Title: A Cafe on the Nile by Bartle Bull ISBN: 0-7867-0675-9 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.23 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Rip-roaring Old-fashioned Read!
Comment: They don't write 'em like this anymore. Or at least they don't write and publish enough of them. Here is a tale of high adventure set in the wilds of Africa (from the rough and tumble city of Cairo, Egypt to the highlands of Ethiopia) on the eve of World War II. Bull writes vividly about a fascinating cast of characters caught up in events which are both world shaking and personally significant to each of them. World War I is only just behind these people and World War II is already looming on the horizon. Fascist Italy has pretensions to empire in Africa and poison gas is to be the key to it. All the while, the Goan dwarf, Olivio Fonseca Alavedo, is poised to grow rich with his schemes to corner the cotton market while his friends are struggling with the Depression-induced poverty of the thirties.
Into this shaken time come twin sisters from America, paying for a safari to be conducted by Olivio's old friend, the hunter Anton Rider out of Kenya, while Anton's lovely wife Gwenn, who has left him to do something more significant with her life, and for her two sons, lives nearby, the mistress of a clever Italian air force officer whose attentions enable her to pursue her medical studies at the University of Cairo. An elder, down-at-the-heels English gentleman rounds out Olivio's little circle of close friends while the rough-edged German adventurer, Ernst von Decker, shows up to draw Rider into his own schemes.
Although the players are mostly of the stock sort, they are engagingly drawn. I loved how Bull portrays the "white hunter", Rider, as a veritable fish out of water in the mean streets of Cairo, stumbling awkwardly about and giving his prospective clients second thoughts about him, yet a man who is masterfully competent in his own milieu in the bush. And the Goan dwarf, Olivio, is an especially intriguing (and oddly touching) personality in his machinations to outlast and defeat his scheming enemies in the Cairene bureaucracy while grappling with personal disabilities which would defeat lesser souls.
And yet, there was something pro-forma about it all. One of the inside blurbs called this book "a cup of CASABLANCA, a dollop of Isak Dinesen, a pinch of INDIANA JONES and a touch of TENDER IS THE NIGHT." I think that's about right and that it makes for a very heady brew if you like this sort of thing. As it happens, I do. There were, however, a few problems since the tale did seem somewhat drawn out and not nearly as compelling in the middle as at the end. And I was made a bit uncomfortable by the constant shifts between locales and story lines as the action was continuously deferred in one place to look in on alternating players elsewhere as the tale progressed.
My own preference is for a story which pretty much carries you right through the main line of action. But the varying streams were each interesting in their own way and, while slowing up the read, did not finally halt it. I found myself more and more anxious to see how the characters would work themselves out of their various predicaments (though I never doubted for a moment that they would). Although they were not the deepest of personalities and were plainly stereotypes, they were nicely drawn for the most part (though I had some problem with the lack of presence of Olivio's Kikuyu wife, Kina).
There is a bit of graphic sexuality and violence here but nothing that seemed out of the way for this sort of book and the events it portrayed. However, I thought Mr. Bull's credibility and authorial authority somewhat compromised in the end when he consistently referred to crocodiles as amphibians rather than the reptiles they are. At first I thought it an editorial slip but he did it more than once which I found jarring (though not debilitating to the tale which did seem to reflect a real feel for the terrain). I guess Mr. Bull is just not strong in the sciences . . . or had a momentary lapse. Yet, with all these caveats I have to pound the table for this book because most of the time I wanted to keep going back despite all and, in the end, I couldn't stop until I'd finished it. And when I had, it felt as though I'd been there. -- SWM
Rating: 5
Summary: A Cafe on the Nile
Comment: I read an average of two books a week. This is the best book I have read this year. This book has a fast moving plot and delightful characters and a pace I haven't seen since I read the Hardy Boys mysteries as a child. Bull has chosen a location and time that is unfamiliar to most of us. The historical setting alone is worth the time. His turn of phrase comes close to the quality of Tom Robbins with a richness of lexicon that is like rich chocolate. The predecessor novel The White Rhino Hotel is also worth your time. I only wish Bull were more prolific.
Rating: 5
Summary: excellent reading!
Comment: This is the first Bartle Bull I've read but won't be the last. Thoroughly enjoyable and difficult to put down. Very fast paced and it just keeps going and going. Sort of like Tom Clancy without the techno-babble and Robert Ludlum without the gory details. I got caught up in what was going to happen next to the characters, the color of Cairo, Ethiopia and colonial empires circa 1935 and the plot. Although the characters are many, they are well developed. I got a sense of knowing them well quickly without page after page of agonizing character building. I just became a fan of BB. On to the Devil's Oasis and Shanghai Station.
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Title: The Devil's Oasis by Bartle Bull ISBN: 0786709901 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 10 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The White Rhino Hotel by Bartle Bull ISBN: 0786707984 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 30 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Shanghai Station by Bartle Bull ISBN: 0786713143 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 09 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Empires of Sand by David Ball ISBN: 0440236681 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 06 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Ironfire : A Novel of the Knights of Malta and the Last Battle of the Crusades by DAVID BALL ISBN: 0385336012 Publisher: Delacorte Press Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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