Theory of Bastards - Q4: Characters

clash_bowley

Were the characters drawn well? Did they engage you? Were they real individuals to you, or types? Was the relationship between Frankie and Stotts realistic? Did it work? Were the Bonobos appealing to you?

RichardAbbott

I liked the individuals, both human and bonobo, and hey worked for me. What didn't really work was the romance between Frankie and Stotts. I mean, it was obviously going to happen, and the most interesting part of the development was the jealousy of some of the bonobo females.

But it kind of spoiled the biological theory that had been carefully built up - that (I think) was based on the premise that females would deliberately choose to be unfaithful to a life partner who provided security, in order to have children fathered by a male who provided complementary genes but who was in other ways unsuitable - the women subvert and get around social expectations in order to secure more promising evolutionary advantage.

I can see that such a theory has some mileage, but that's not what happens between Frankie and Stott - they are completely isolated, Frankie has no boring-but-affluent provider to be sneaked around, and if the two of them don't get it together then (given that transportation to England seems essentially impossible) then there is no next generation at all.

clash_bowley

Yeah - I kept seeing the romance foreshadowed and hoping I was wrong... but I wasn't

Apocryphal

Ditto. I liked the individuals. The ‘romance’ seemed contrived, like it was a thing the publisher wanted. It wasn’t really a romance, though, was it?

NeilNjae

Nothing to say, except that the bonobos were written as distinct characters that we got to know by the end of the book. Another instance of Schulman lowering the boundaries between human and ape?

clash_bowley

@Apocryphal said:
Ditto. I liked the individuals. The ‘romance’ seemed contrived, like it was a thing the publisher wanted. It wasn’t really a romance, though, was it?

Romance was not the word I would use either...

clash_bowley

@NeilNjae said:
Nothing to say, except that the bonobos were written as distinct characters that we got to know by the end of the book. Another instance of Schulman lowering the boundaries between human and ape?

The Bonobos were wonderfully drawn. I don't know if this is a deliberate policy or a side effect of something else, but it does have that quality in the end.

Apocryphal

I’m not sure how someone could write this novel without having the bonobos as characters, so I don’t really see it as the author blurring the lines between the species, so much as just making sure all characters are interesting. She certainly made no such efforts with the Chimpanzees, which are really quite ‘othered’ by this story.

clash_bowley

@Apocryphal said:
She certainly made no such efforts with the Chimpanzees, which are really quite ‘othered’ by this story.

Why I was thinking "side-effect" there...