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The Jungle Law

As a break from Military Science Fiction, I bring you a historical fiction about Rudyard Kipling, he of the Indian tales and poems based in the heyday of the British Empire.

Now, you must know that I am a shameless Kipling fan. There are many reasons, not least of which because I lived for a time with the Grand Trunk Road, so aptly described in Kim, just off my front doorstep in Punjab. India being what it is, timeless in that nothing is ever discarded, still had the conveyances of Kipling’s day passing by along with the trucks and buses of modern times. I could wake of a morning and look down on a caravan of ox carts passing just as if it were one hundred years before.

I had to read this book. One, because the Kipling Society had praised it; and two, because it dealt with the creation of The Jungle Books, Kipling’s most well-known and most filmed classic of a boy raised by wolves.

The author supposes a conflicted and unhappy American family living in poverty near Kipling when he tried settling in Vermont. The only child of that family, Joe Connolly, finds himself drawn to Kipling as the famous man bounces ideas about “Mowgli” and the law of the jungle off the youth.

With fanciful ideas in his head, the youth reaches beyond his practical life to an imaginary world that proves both harmful and destructive, but builds in him the strength to break away from the cycle of poverty and drunkenness that characterizes his father’s life.

This parallels the up and down stages of Kipling’s creativity where the ability to write waxes and wanes with the distractions of everyday life and a rather controlling wife, who believes she is aiding her husband by removing him from everyday activities.

I must say the Kipling Society is apparently desperate for popular novels about Kipling. Either that or the society has members who aren’t as critical as myself or don’t have the intimate knowledge of India as I do.

The work is far more about the poor Irish-American family and their struggles than any realistic view of Kipling. It lost my respect early on when the author, Victoria Vinton, had Kipling relating a memory of a dead youth with an Islamic name being burned by a river in India. Moslems generally bury their dead. Hindus generally burn their deceased. Kipling would know that, but many would not, apparently including the author.

Still the book is a quick read. It does recreate 19th Century Vermont nicely. And it offers a unflattering view of Caroline Kipling that may be illustrative to some unfamiliar with Kipling’s life.

Just don’t take it as fact. Kipling was a journalist and, therefore, a trained observer. He couldn’t have been like the distracted moon-calf Vinton paints in her novel. Kipling’s own journals and writings show him to be appreciative of a well-turned ankle and of women’s charms and faults in general. It’s hard to imagine him as the hen-pecked captive of his wife shown here.

In general, I class this book as a woman’s weekend read, equivalent to a few hours spent watching soap operas. Men will want to skim past the social commentary and get to the little bits of adventure quickly. Women may care for the bitter-sweet ending. If you get a chance to read it, decide for yourself.