Encountering the ‘other’
The essayist Tzvetan Todorov writes in The Conquest Of America: The Question Of The Other that the history of the world is made up of conquests and defeats, of colonisations and discoveries of others. He argues that at the beginning of the 16th century, the native Americans of the New World were present but nothing was known about them. The discovery of America was therefore crucial because it brought white European settlers to an encounter with the natives from the onset. And with this encounter, a projection of what the Other would be. Knowledge and images were for the first time being sent “back home” of what the savage might be.
Fast forward to the 21st century, the “encounter” is still prevalent. The encounter not only inspires the turbulent idea of what the Other might be; it also establishes the identity of oneself. The onlookers are getting a sense of what they are, too.
In Lawrence Osborne’s latest novel Beautiful Animals, the concept of encounter is taken to the extreme. Set on the idyllic Hydra where wealthy Europeans and Americans mingle under the Aegean sun, the story involves an English girl, Naomi, daughter of an airline owner, and a slightly younger American girl, Samantha Haldane. They meet and bond, but the real encounter comes later when the two girls finds Faoud, a Syrian migrant washed ashore.
Intrigued, Naomi comes up with the “white women’s burden” plan to save Faoud and send him to the mainland. Samantha is reluctant but agrees to be the partner in crime. The plan involves having Faoud rob Naomi’s own house while her parents are asleep. But it all goes awfully wrong when the parents wake up, and the small crime the girls have hatched becomes something else much bigger.
The “savage” Faoud, as it turns out, isn’t a typical migrant. He’s from a bourgeois background, speaks English and French, and has a penchant for fashionable clothing. He soon makes off with credit cards and a car and calculates how to get away from Greece. Osborne doesn’t judge Faoud’s action, and Faoud appears like a human being who needs to save himself: he kills, cheats, lies. But that’s what humans in desperation do.
The most interesting character in Beautiful Animals is Naomi. She’s complex, quiet, dark, fragile. And while declaring herself a moral person, she has no regret in the consequences of her action. The encounter with Faoud — perhaps her “beautiful animal” — allows her to play God. For her, pain and beauty is inseparable. Samantha, meanwhile, is what most of us are like. She’s thrilled to have met Naomi and Faoud, but her summer at Hydra is merely an adventure — a phase in her life.
Osborne’s writing moves briskly, and his observant eyes give the book its edge. His Hydra is descriptive, but far away from being a paradise. More likely, it’s a place where the locals aren’t reluctant to show contempt to rich holidaymakers while at the same time wanting to milk them.
Beautiful Animals isn’t a beach read, there are serious issues in the story set against the balmy Grecian sun. But it’s great to read before the summer ends.