Zara's Tales : Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa

Rating:
Summary: Landscape: CLOSED
Review: Renowned photographer Peter Beard's Zara's Tales (2004), a book of airy African anecdotes ostensibly written for Beard's young daughter, is clearly intended for "children of all ages," but its best audience will probably be found among adolescents with an interest in the exotic and a talent for discerning the wheat from the chafe.

Unattractively, the narrative is reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne at his worst in both style and tone, being by turns smug, sardonic, condescending, patronizing, and both mocking and self-parodying. The overall impression the text leaves is that there is very little actual content to Zara's Tales, and what little exists is buried under the author's labored and indulgent prose.

The book is also overloaded at every turn with whimsical baby talk that frequently approaches high camp: a half page of text about a young rhino offers readers expressions like "delicious yum-yums," "spoiled brats," "bouncy baby," "tooth-some sweets," and "bonbon handouts." Not even young children will find this phraseology less than cloying.

Such language is in doubly poor taste since the brief story concludes with the rhino biting off the finger of a "neophyte ranger," while Beard's friend and comrade, Ken Randall, who Beard refers to as "a lunatic," rolls on the ground, "shaking and gasping, tears of laughter streaming down his face." In fact, there's little point to the anecdote except that Randall finds the tragic accident hilarious, a message many parents and educators will probably find revolting.

A photo montage of dead and decaying elephant corpses, reprinted from Beard's The End of the Game (1965), while obliquely underscoring the plight of African wildlife, only further throws into question exactly what audience Zara's Tales is intended for.

The book is physically handsome, but suffers slightly from being over-decorated in Beard's crowded, sentimental style. The author's photographs of the African landscape, peoples, and wildlife are entrancing and dramatic in most cases, and thus deserve finer narrative support than the thin, disappointing text provides. By the last chapter, the book suggests nothing so much as a private family project that has somehow found its way into the public market; many adults mistakenly believe their personal family musings have a broader objective appeal, and Zara's Tales, like a cartridge of tedious holiday slides, is no exception.