You’re an animal, Viskovitz!

You’re an animal, Viskovitz by Alessandro Boffa (translated from the Italian by John Casey, with Maria Sanminiatelli). Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

I read about this book on another blog, Books on the Nightstand, or actually listened to a podcast about it.  They were highlighting “little” books with great stories.  The title grabbed me but the premise was what made me check it out.  In each of the 20 stories in Alessandro Boffa’s book, Viskovitz is portrayed as a different animal.  In the first story, How’s Life Treating You, Viskovitz?, he is a dormouse having trouble waking up from hibernation. In another, he is a snail who falls in love with his own reflection.

Visko also becomes a spider, a lion, a dog with a Sam Spade patter, the fastest scorpion is the West,  a tapeworm who can’t understand why his host doesn’t love him, and so on.  In each story his one true love is Ljuba, his friends/siblings/enemies are Zucotic, Petrovic, and Lopez.  Boffa, a biologist, has Viskovitz use scientific descriptions such as, “Her exoskeleton was red as the dawn, her corslet a whirlwind of golden reflections…Every part of her body, emimeron or episternum, prothorax, mesothorax or metathorax, ureters, stigma or scutellum was for my ocelli both joy and torment.”

Okay, maybe that isn’t a big selling point if you are not a zoologist, but the humor in the book is marvelous.  “Viskovitz turned and said, ‘I’d like you to get our conversation down in black and white.’  ‘It’s not possible I answered. ‘I’m not a typist, I’m not a writer. I’m a penquin.  As far as I’m concerned , “getting it down in black and white” means making more penguins.’”  Most of the humor comes from the situations.  Viskovitz the dung beetle sets about amassing huge quantities of, well, dung, creating an empire to attract Ljuba, the love of his life.  When he invites her to dive in to his mega pool of poo, he finds out that she is a may beetle and only eats pollen.  Viskovitz the lion falls in love with a gazelle and when meeting her family can’t keep from eating her parents.

I found myself looking forward to each story to see first what he would become and then how he would make out.  This is a great little book with a big punch.

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