A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga

by Julia Whitty

Book Overview

Bringing a unique perspective and a singular voice to contemporary fiction, A TORTOISE FOR THE QUEEN OF TONGA features lush, poignant stories about the natural world. Here are mammals, historical figures, everyday people who discover the liberating properties of memory and knowledge in the face of captivity and loneliness. We meet a forlorn tortoise forced to live among humans. We witness orcas at Ocean World staging a revolt, using celibacy as their...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618119809
• ISBN13: 9780618119806
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Amazing new writer!

A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga is that rarest of birds: a first collection of short stories that educates as well as entertains. Whitty's extensive familiarity with the natural world make each one of these stories sprout from the page and root in the mind like well-tended plants. From Antartica to Africa to Tonga Whitty carefully guides us through subtle dramas where flora, fauna, and homosapiens try to co-exist in a world that is both sad and almost unbearably hopeful. A wondrous find.

Novel readers will love these short stories!

I read novels and non-fiction, I don't like short stories and rarely read them. Well . . . that was true untill I picked up Julia Whitty's short story collection, A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga. What caught my eye was the title (being a tortoise lover all my life) but what captured my intrest and kept me reading was Whitty's unusual weave of people, animals and beautifully rendered scenes of exotic places. Whether viewing ice age art in a French cave with The Story of the Deep Dark or under the Antartic ice cap with Jimmy Under Water, I was so completely involved with the stories that I didn't want them to end. These ten stories with Whitty's unique outlook on life and nature have captured my heart and introduced me to fantastic short story writing. I look forward to her next collection and hopefully a novel soon.

A Salute to the Imagination

Spanning continents, historical eras, and most significantly, the human and animal kingdoms, these stories by Julia Whitty may cause you to re-examine some of your most basic assumptions about life, and will definitely give you pleasure as you read.

So great and unlike anything I've read

These stories are really amazing, and take you to distant places and lands. The characters are likeable and the writing is full of luminous moments and funny, quirky turns of phrase. These stories will appeal to anyone who likes good, different fiction, not just to animal lovers. Buy this!

Extraordinary Insight

Julia Whitty is a real find - a writer who can reveal something new in something you may think you already know. Nor is she afraid to allow that animals might be conscious, feeling, emotional creatures. Many of her stories reveal the inner life of animals. While no one can really know how a tortoise or killer whale or elephant feels, there need be no alarm raised about a work of fiction that postulates that animals do feel and then imagining how they might feel and think. A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga will set of thoughts and recognitions and if you allow them to run their course they will challenge our ethical view of all animal life.