+++1/2
She is not a funny book, but one priceless scene involves a proud Englishman who has been summoned, along with a high-ranking slave, before the ruler of a lost and now-degraded civilization. The slave falls immediately to his hands and knees, creeping forward ever so slowly. The Englishman, refusing his companion's undignified advance, chooses to walk. But what a walk! Following the slow-moving slave, he can either pause between each step or raise one leg and wave it about until given room to put it down again. Either way, he realizes, he looks almost as silly as the slave. This is the charm of She. It is not the most exciting adventure you will ever read, but its characterizations are sharp and believable and unapologetic. The adventure begins when three Englishmen, one of whom might be related to an ancient Egyptian, set out to discover the truth of tales passed from generation to generation about a strange city and an even stranger woman said to rule there with an iron hand. The good stuff, on the other hand, begins when they arrive, literally finding much more than they ever believed possible. And that's because it is only then that the characters really begin to shine -- not as archetypes but as real people who act and react not perhaps as we would want them to, but refreshingly as people really would under similar circumstances. As you might expect from a book about a woman known to her people as She-who-must-be-obeyed, Haggard also provides an intriguing take on the issue of male and female dominance. Adapted several times for the screen, including one silent film for which Haggard himself wrote the intertitles, but perhaps most famously in 1965, in a film starring Ursula Andress.
She is not a funny book, but one priceless scene involves a proud Englishman who has been summoned, along with a high-ranking slave, before the ruler of a lost and now-degraded civilization. The slave falls immediately to his hands and knees, creeping forward ever so slowly. The Englishman, refusing his companion's undignified advance, chooses to walk. But what a walk! Following the slow-moving slave, he can either pause between each step or raise one leg and wave it about until given room to put it down again. Either way, he realizes, he looks almost as silly as the slave. This is the charm of She. It is not the most exciting adventure you will ever read, but its characterizations are sharp and believable and unapologetic. The adventure begins when three Englishmen, one of whom might be related to an ancient Egyptian, set out to discover the truth of tales passed from generation to generation about a strange city and an even stranger woman said to rule there with an iron hand. The good stuff, on the other hand, begins when they arrive, literally finding much more than they ever believed possible. And that's because it is only then that the characters really begin to shine -- not as archetypes but as real people who act and react not perhaps as we would want them to, but refreshingly as people really would under similar circumstances. As you might expect from a book about a woman known to her people as She-who-must-be-obeyed, Haggard also provides an intriguing take on the issue of male and female dominance. Adapted several times for the screen, including one silent film for which Haggard himself wrote the intertitles, but perhaps most famously in 1965, in a film starring Ursula Andress.