Hello to the Cannibals

by Richard Bausch

At first, all Lily Austin knows about 19th–century explorer Mary Kingsley is that, 100 years before, she was the first white woman to venture into the heart of Africa. But as Lily begins reading about Mary Kingsley, she becomes more and more fascinated – and discovers in Mary a kindred spirit.

In her own life, Lily feels trapped – on the one hand, she craves family and intimate connection; on the other hand, she has no healthy or satisfying role models. Consequently, as she nears graduation from the University of Virginia, she finds herself uncertain about what to do with her life.

As she researches Mary's life – she has begun writing a play about her – Lily comes to witness Mary's incredible bravery and startling originality, qualities that prove inspirational to Lily, whose own bravery is required as she attempts to navigate dysfunctional and destructive relationships with her young husband, her extended family – and a legacy of abuse dating back to her childhood.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Biographical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels

688 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

An acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Narrative, Gentleman's Quarterly. Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story.

Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, Wives & Lovers, and most recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length film.

He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence . He has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 1996. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; since Cassill's passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. Richard Bausch teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University in Southern California

Reviews

[Marlee Pinsker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just read the reviews of people on this site, and I am glad to see that I had good company in my annoyance of this book. I spent a few hours reading it and then realized I was forcing myself to pick it up. There wasn't a single character I found interesting or identified with. I would have enjoyed the first person story that opened the book, but I couldn't figure out why it had to be written in distracting italics. Was there a good reason for this? Then the main character did so little to try to understand herself. I can comprehend the disgust she felt of a near rape and the tension of a parental divorce, but I can't figure out why I should read a book about a person who had so little insight or determination. It was like picking up a newspaper and reading a victim impact report. The explorer story did not help the main character to understand or shape her life so what good was it to her?

[Joel · Rating 1 out of 5]

While parts of this novel are beautiful to read, especially description, the characters just never really come to life; I ended up not caring all that much what happens to Lily, the heroine. Most of the book felt like a badly rehearsed play, with scenes running far too long and the actors making the wrong entrances and exits and missing their cues.

It could have been much shorter, given how little actually happens on the page. First person was a poor choice for point of view for a work this long, especially given how many rich opportunities this decision closed off.

All in all, I had high hopes, given a blurb on the DJ by one of my favorite writers, Andrea Barrett. But in the end, I'm left wondering whether she read the same book I did, or whether her comment was intended for another book entirely.

I'll try something else by Bausch one of these days, but not right away.

[Ayelet Waldman]

I hereby declare a moratorium on men of a certain age writing from the point of view of young women. I will not allow it anymore, because those of us who are women (even if the fact that we are approaching our fortieth birthday with terrifying inexorability precludes us from calling ourselves young) find too many embarrassing mistakes, the kind of things that make us fling a novel across the room in frustration. Plus--enough with the shifting time periods. Unless they are really and truly related, all they do is distract from one another. Will someone please remind me of this if I ever convince anyone to buy The Bloom Girls?

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be a very enjoyable adventure. Lily & especially Mary captivated me with the telling of their story. A woman, alone, in the mid to late 1800's England did not have a lively assortment of choices. But Mary Kingsley set that norm on it's ear! Daring to enter deepest Africa, repeatedly, visiting people who had never seen Europeans is brave beyond belief! Trained to hardship by growing up nursing her invalid parents, she took those skills & not only survived her African Experience, but thrived on it. Astonishing her contemporaries & consuming Lily to write about her. Lily's own troubled character benefits by their 'relationship', & I believe, helps her to eventually triumph in her own life.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

So disappointing. Mary Kingsley's account, Travels in West Africa, is a gem of humor, kindness, and fortitude. Sadly, Hello to the Cannibals has none of these qualities, especially the humor. Instead, the author focuses on the melancholy inner life of its characters, while never quite making them real. Mary Kingsley leaps off the page in her own writing, but in this book, she's flat and dull, and her modern counterpart is yet another whiny girl. I wanted to love this book, but I couldn't even like it.

[Debra Waites · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long, laborious, I did not enjoy it. Could not connect with the characters. Could it be because it is about two women but written by a man? I have not felt in my life a strong feminist strain, but I do not feel the author caught the inner workings of these two women.

[Shannon Saffell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was well written, but I wish the transitions between Lily and Mary were more defined. I also wanted to know more about Lily as her story progressed, but it seemed like telling Mary's story was more important. I enjoyed it, but I won't reread it; it's how I decide whether to pass along or keep.

[John Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Richard has written an ambitious historical fiction novel. He takes into the heart of Africa and back and forth to the estates of the landed aristocracy. One woman's account of her father's life and adventures and hers are entwined.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read combining interweaved stories one based on historical figure and a young woman seeking to find her way in the world a hundred years apart.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sounds like Mary Kingsley had a fascinating life. Too bad we have to wade through all these creepy, pathetic men and sad, pathetic women to get to her.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hello to the Cannibals. Richard Bausch. 2002. Harper Collins. 661 pages.

Hello to the Cannibals by Richard Bausch is such an expansive book and took me awhile to read, and I definitely wouldn't do it again. The synopsis of Hello to the Cannibals is much more interesting than what it actually turned out to be.

Hello to the Cannibals is about a young woman named Lily Austin who is mature, intelligent, and incredibly insightful for her age. At her 14th birthday party, Lily receives a biography about Mary Kingsley, an adventurer in the 19th century who traveled the world over. For the next 10 years of Lily's life, she drowns herself in Mary Kingsley and uses the woman as comfort and inspiration to help herself through her own hard times. Descended from playwrights, Lily also writes a play with Mary Kingsley being the focal point. The book spans back and forth between Lily's life and Mary's life until we are greeted with Kingsley's early death at the end.

Although Hello to the Cannibals didn't lag enough to be totally boring, I was disappointed with the overall outcome. Lily is presented to us as being an intelligent, bright young woman; however the choices she makes in life are somewhat boring and unimpressive. Mary's character is so witty and smart and we expect her to rub off more on Lily, but this isn't the case. Whereas Mary was modern and adventurous, Lily is old-fashioned and lazy with her dreams.

I expected the book to be uplifting and happy,with Lily accomplishing great things, but it is Mary we end up being impressed with; not Lily.

For 661 pages, Hello to the Cannibals just isn't exhilarating enough to waste time on. I don't recommend it at all!

[Alyssa Greatbanks · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story was pretty slow at first(then for the rest of the book), but shortly in to it the main character, Lily, was molested by a friend's grandparent. After that, seeing the horror that she was feeling, I figured it would be a book where she had to overcome the memories of it and find herself again. Nope.

Lily was a rather infuriating character, mainly because she did almost nothing about any current situation. She just went along with whatever was going on. Not only that, but the play she was writing about Mary, which I then assumed would be the main plot of this story, seemed to just be at the back of her mind. Rarely did she attempt to write it, most of the book dealing with Mary was letters and journal entries that Mary herself wrote. Honestly I would have rather read a book only on Mary, at least she was interesting and a strong character.

Setting aside the issues with Lily, the author described everything in such massive amounts of detail that it made the book MUCH longer than it really should have been. I barely felt like reading it, and when I did I only made it through 10-20 pages at a time before I had to stop.

To add to what I said before, there really isn't a whole lot in the way of a plot. We are just following Lily through her normal life. There could have been more done with that. At the end we are just left with a rather disappointing cliffhanger. Lily does finish the play, but other than that there is really nothing of interest added and it feels like it just cuts off.

I would have liked to have liked this book. The summary made it sound really interesting, but overall the book itself did not live up to my expectations.

[Lhaver · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. But I don't think that I really finished it. or at least, I stopped paying attention to what I was reading by the last 100 pages or so.

The story blends the stories of a 19 year old depressed college theatre student with a Victorian explorer. One of the only women to explore any part of Africa on her own. The juxtaposition is forced, and the the writing is earnest. One of the hardest things for me to believe is that the story of the girl who has a traumatic near rape experience at 13, whose parents divorce, but still encourage her, who is spoiled and feels smothered all at he same time, and gets pregnant, and married, and drops out of college to move to Louisiana relates at all to the story of the explorer. The explorer lived in near seclusion to care for her dying mother until she was 31, and then decided to leave it all and explore, on her own, remote parts of western Africa. It just never believed that the girl who just let life happen to her and whined about it was really learning anything from her counterpart, or that her counterpart would have had any patience for her.

If you've got it on hand, read it, but I wouldn't go looking for it.

[Carole · Rating 3 out of 5]

The intertwined stories of a young college student, struggling with her identity, and Mary Kingsley, a 19th century woman explorer in Africa, were an interesting combination. The student who leaves school right before graduation works on a play about Mary Kingsley to carry her through a variety of family disappointments and a brief marriage. Despite her success in completing the play, and despite a reconciliation with her family, the ending never really seemed to resolve the story in a satisfactory manner.

[Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book jacket emphasized the historical aspects of the book as incorporating the life of Mary Kingsley into the story. Much of the book however, is the primary story of how Lily Austin relates to Mary Kingsley as she tries to pull herself out of a major depression triggered by her parents divorce. At 661 pages, this was too slow paced for my taste. Just when more excerpts from Mary Kingleys' life were forthcoming, my tolerance for the length of the book flagged, and I skimmed over the second half of the book. It would best serve those interested in a summer vacation read.

[Heidi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. I can't finish this book -- the historical part featuring Mary Kingsley was slightly interesting, but when I read the author's afterward saying that he made up a good percentage of that story, I really couldn't stomach it anymore. As for the modern-day part... well, I wasn't moved to even begin to care about Lily and Tyler and the soap opera that was their life. This one is going back to the book swap whence it came.

[Martac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't really put this book down while I was reading it. It may overlap something of a chick-flick-like genre, but the characters are well developed and Bausch noted Chekov's advice: don't forget the weather.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lily's life is transformed after receiving a book on women explorers and learning about the life of Mary Kingsley. The reader gets to see the views of both Lily and Mary. Very interesting. Can get a little slow at times, but overall a good read.

[Terra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the present-day narrative and really disliked the historical one. I didn't finish. But I think Bausch has some really great storytelling skills so I'm going to try another one by him.

[Steven Monrad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Story within a story, women's point of view
too psychological for me

[Suzanne Moore]

Victorian explorer, Mary Kingsley

[Beth Shields-Szostak]

1st edition, signed & inscribed by author

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history is absorbing. Mary is wonderful. Lily, not so much.

[Barbara]

Love Mary Kingsley, but couldn't find her soon enough in this, I'll try again in a few months.

[Ninon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this a long time ago - great story of the first woman to explore Africa - it would be an interesting companion piece to "Things Fall Apart."