McDonald, Roger. Mr. Darwin’s Shooter. Random House, 1998.
Reason read: Charles Darwin was born in February. Read in his honor.
Meet Syms Covington. Raised in Bedford and by the age of thirteen, left home and went to sea. This is no ordinary boy. Grown to reach six feet tall, Syms looked like a man. By fifteen years of age he was in the service of Charles Darwin as his hunter and collector about the HMS Beagle. In later years, Covington grapples with his religious beliefs which are in direct conflict with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Confessional: reading Mr. Darwin’s Shooter was like walking down a gravel road barefoot. Much of my effort was spent gingerly picking through the sentences, hoping to land on ones more comfortable and less complicated. McDonald chose to cram a lot of sharp edges into his short book. The running commentary on 19th century culture and society was important to keep the reader grounded in the time period, but ended up ensnaring and slogging the plot. Here is how I know I book will not hold my interest – I can’t remember what was happening when I left off reading. I don’t remember the last character on the page or what they did or said. Darwin isn’t even introduced until nearly 150 pages in.
Here is the most perfect line to describe anticipation, “A story tingled his arms to the fingertips and shook his shanks down to his toes with anxiety and restlessness” (p 8). Brilliant.
Author fact: Other reviewers have hinted at comparisons between McDonald and Stevenson, Melville, and Doctorow.
Playlist: Barley Mow, To Be a Pilgrim, A View to a Kill, Old Greensleeves, and A-Hunting We Will Go.
Nancy said: Pearl thinks Mr. Darwin’s Shooter is remarkable.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Galloping Through the Galapagos” (p 88).
~*LunaSea*~ 