The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
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15
Ratings3
Average rating4
Captain Bluebear is a bear with blue fur, a creature as unique as the fantastic adventures he undergoes. Unlike cats, which have only nine lives, bluebears have twenty-seven. This is fortunate, because our hero is forever avoiding disaster by a paw's breadth. In this remarkable book, Captain Bluebear tells the story of his first thirteen-and-a-half lives spent on the mysterious continent of Zamonia, where intelligence is an infectious disease and water flows uphill, where headless giants roam deserts made of sugar, and where only Captain Bluebear's courage and ingenuity enable him to escape the dangers that lie in wait for him around every corner. In company with our indomitable hero, we enter a land of imaginative lunacy and supreme adventure, wicked satire and epic fantasy, all mixed together, turned on its head, and lavishly illustrated by the author.
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This is a fun book, whimsically illustrated in a 'Cat in the Hat' style, and is well worth reading, if you like surreal stuff.
For example: "The only certainty is that I was a foundling abandoned in the middle of the ocean. My earliest memory is of being afloat in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, for at first I was very, very small." He is rescued from being sucked down a gigantic whirlpool by a tribe of minipirates - four and five-inch tall beings, with two peg-legs, two hooks for hands, eyepatches and triangular hats, who are the unacknowledged masters of the high seas. When he grows too big for their ship they regretfully abandon him, and he spends a number of weeks crying to entertain an island of hobgoblins. He is later taught to speak - and indeed, not just to speak, but to master all forms of verbal communication - by a couple of talking waves who argue incessantly with one another, then later is rescued in the nick of time from a carnivorous island. This book is relentlessly, unflaggingly inventive and easily matches the flights of fancy in the Phantom Tollbooth and other such works. Needless to say, Bluebear finds himself well-equipped when he enters a lying competition later on in the book. A hundred rounds - also a record, against Nussram Fhakir the Unique, just before the City of Atlantis took off and flew back to its home planet. That's just a small part of what's here - just three or four of Bluebear's 13½ documented lives. Do check this book out.
Yeah, it's supposedly a kid's book, for kids maybe around Phantom Tollbooth age, but it's a very good translation, so even if you want to pretend to be grown-up you can read it to admire the translator's art. A bit like Stanislaw Lem or the Asterix books, the translation work is itself worthy of attention. And the level of surrealism is top-tier.
A treasure trove of imagination. Adventure & nonsense in equal measure, there are shaggy-dog-story stretches but also a lot of fun. Cover does well to reference Adams and Silverstein, I'd add the absurdities of Terry Pratchett's Discworld & Alice in Wonderland to the mix. Beware: certain creatures & scenarios could be nightmare fuel, and being published in 1999 means certain insensitivities crop up. ⚠️ Fatphobia
