The Jungle Law

by Victoria Vinton

Book Overview

"In the tradition of The Hours and The Master, The Jungle Law offers a glimpse into the life of Rudyard Kipling and explores the deep divisions and connections between two families who change the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596921994
• ISBN13: 9781596921993
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
• Length: 303 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An Invitation Into Another Lifetime

Victoria Vinton, whose stories have appeared in a variety of publications including "Prairie Schooner" and "Sewanee River", has a gem of a first novel in The Jungle Law. Using what has been described as a literary footnote, Vinton has crafted an imaginative, engaging tale of Rudyard Kipling and a small neighbor boy, and the exchanges between them which led to the very famous Kipling work, The Jungle Book. In an effort to escape increasing fame, Kipling moved his then pregnant wife to Vermont in the late nineteenth century. It is in the backdrop of the rural Vermont countryside that VInton introduces us to Kipling, his wife and their nearest neighbors, the Connellys. Young Joe Connelly's lively imagination helps to spark some of the details that any Jungle Book fan would readily recognize. Many of the characteristic mannerisms of the Jungle Book's "man-child" Mowgli are descriptions of Joe at play with Kipling urging the boy to imagine he is the man-child being raised by jungle animals. Vinton weaves the story of young Joe Connelly through the story of the Kiplings in Vermont, but the strongest thread in her tale is that of the evolution of The Jungle Book. Kipling spent part of his early life in Bombay. His family was filled with eccentric members whose stories infused a love of words and storytelling into the impressionable and imaginative Kipling. A move to England catapulted the writer into a literary mecca where he kept company with many notables. Because his privacy was far more important to him than fame, he moved to rural Vermont in the hopes of finding a place where he and his Daemon (the equivalent of his muse) would be able to take the seeds of a story and see it through to its end. The roots of those story seeds were in his days in Bombay. It is from the Hindi names for various jungle beasts that Kipling gave names to his Jungle Book characters: Baloo, the bear; Bagheera, the panther; Tabaqui, the jackal. Drawing from his imagined man-child's movements, he assigns the name Mowgli from the Hindi term for Little Frog. In the jungle, there is an unspoken law by which the beasts abide. This law--The Jungle Law--becomes the backdrop for the lessons the jungle beasts present to Mowgli. The Law was "a set of rules and protocols that all the animals followed in order to live peaceably side by side, in relative good faith and order." In truth, it is in the tradition of the Law that Kipling and Joe both live among their family members and friends. The friendship between the two is, in many ways, as unlikely as Mowgli being raised by jungle animals and schooled in jungle law. Yet, their friendship is what gives voice to that man-child, his jungle family, and the simple laws of life which provide a framework for peaceful living among others. Vinton paints word pictures as vivid as the film version of The Jungle Book. In doing so, she thrusts her readers into the nineteenth century life of Rudyard Kipling and into the mind of a creative s

This is a lovely book.

THE JUNGLE LAW by Victoria Vinton brings the author Rudyard Kipling to life -- fictional life, that is, as Vinton presents her interpretation of what may have happened when Kipling and his wife, Caroline, moved to Vermont in 1892. It was there that Caroline bore a child and Kipling developed the character Mowgli of The Jungle Books. Now, this is beautiful literature. Vinton invents the Connollys, neighbors for the Kiplings: Joe, a boy of 11; his mother, who does the Kiplings' laundry; and Joe's jealous, abusive father. The adults are kept apart by class barriers, but Kipling and the boy become friends. For Joe, Kipling's house "is like a marvelous treasure trove, filled with all sorts of riches." And when Kipling talks, it's exciting, colorful and lyrical. Joe is fascinated by him. Kipling introduces his young neighbor to the Law of the Jungle and to the world of wonder inside his own mind. The book centers around their relationship, but it's really about imagination -- the glorious treasures inside Kipling's head and the boy's budding curiosity about ideas and possibilities. In the midst of his mean, hard life, the boy daydreams about Kipling's travel tales. His dreams become grander and his mind becomes more free -- and his father hates the result. Her characters are complex and she evokes vivid emotions, but it's Vinton's language that is simply gorgeous, with lush images. The book is a pleasure to read: "Light falls through the trees in bright dapples, glancing off the fruit in the trees and the wings of the monarchs that flutter and perch on the Queen Anne's lace by the roadside." Pondering the differences between India and Vermont, Kipling "knew right away that here was a place where he could concentrate and work, if only because it was so different from the India he'd known, where the seasons went from wet to dry and the dead never seemed to stay dead and the walls of gardens were set with old bones and vultures were as common as crows." Ooh, this is a lovely book -- a graceful read, a perfect fit for the reader who loves to be in the company of splendid language.

(4.5) "The night has gotten into his head..."

The unusual friendship between Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and an impressionistic neighbor boy, Joe Connelly, is the crux of Kipling's Jungle Books in Vinton's imaginative tale. In 1892, the newly transplanted writer has settled in Vermont to build his dream house, inspired to write without the exotic distractions of India. Forming the skeleton of his new tale, Kipling finds both landscape and boy a source of inspiration: "The cold and the snow were like a revelation, with stark and unspoiled purity he'd never beheld before... here was a place where he could work... where the seasons went from wet to dry and the dead never seemed to stay dead." Joe's imagination is caught by Kipling's words, the tale of the boy, Mowgli, yet forming in the author's mind. With Joe as inspiration, man and boy confer, Kipling sharing the bits of adventure yet to be written, the boy taking ownership, ignited by such freedom, the color and warmth of India, the lush jungle so different from the icy scene of Vermont. Reaching into the Vermont landscape, Kipling builds Mowgli's world, peopled with all its enchantments, dreaming Joe into the verdant fantasy, while the boy's parents watch their son with chagrin, determined to recapture him. The two families could not be more different, yet Kipling and Joe form a bond that transcends circumstances in Vinton's fictionally believable account of a creative endeavor and a budding friendship. The prose is striking, contrasting the stark Vermont countryside with the India of Kipling's youth, the tales of Scheherazade and the burgeoning adventure of a boy raised by wolves. Joes' father, Jack, is an Irishman come to America to escape the famine, almost killed while working on the railroad, now toiling on his own small farm for meager sustenance. A man burdened by disappointment, the ideals he once nurtured dashed by the reality of hard labor, Jack finds solace in his jug at night, but the drink turns him bitter, shamed that his wife, Addie, does washing and ironing for their strange neighbors, the Kipling's. Jack doesn't trust Kipling, views him the same as the wealthy landowners who passed the starving Irish peasants without a nod. What can such a man do when his son is threatened by the fascination of new ideas, called to a world so unlike what his father can provide? In his wanderings, a conflicted Joe has come face to face with his own limitations, Kipling's words a heady drug that leads him into the dark and unforgiving night: "How foolish to think that he was heading forward... when in fact all he's done is wind his way back to another story's beginnings, one that leads only... to dull compromise and sharp regret." Vinton has brought all together in a fierce, magical tale, filled with the intimate details of Kipling's life, his pampered childhood; his removal from the security of mother and home, placed in a hostile foster home until his mother rescues him and his sister; Kipling's friendship with Wolcott, who introduces t

"Wood and Water, Wind & Tree/ Jungle Favor go with thee."

"Jungle Law" is Victoria Vinton's fictionalized historical account of the period, in the late 19th century, when author Rudyard Kipling and his wife, Carrie, came to live in Vermont, USA. This is where he wrote the glorious stories later called "The Jungle Books." In her imaginative debut novel, Ms. Vinton mingles fact with fiction and vividly brings to life Kipling's early years in Bombay, India, where he lived a pampered existence as the only son of a well-to-do British family. She connects his very early experiences in India, as well as later less agreeable ones in England, with the material he used to create the wonderful books and characters that have delighted children and adults for generations. Kipling was born in Bombay, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an arts and crafts teacher at the Jeejeebhoy School. His mother was a sister-in-law of the painter Edward Burne-Jones. Ruddy, as Kipling was affectionately called, was brought up by an ayah who taught him Hindustani as his first language. At the age of six he was taken to England by his parents and left for five years with extended family, virtual strangers. This experience, the abrupt separation from his parents and India, his first home, proved to be a traumatic one for the little boy. He was to write about his feelings during this period later in life, when he dubs his foster home, "The House of Desolation." . In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Starr Balestier, the sister of an American publisher and writer. The young couple moved to the United States, to Brattleboro Vermont where the author wrote the stories which comprise "The Jungle Books." The most familiar, and perhaps best loved, are the Mowgli tales where an Indian baby, Mowgli, is lost in the jungle after Shere Khan, (the tiger), kills his family. He is taken to safety by Bagheera, (the black panther,) and placed with a wolf family that has a brand new litter. The stories tell of how Mowgli is reared by his foster parents, alongside the wolf pups. Over time the child is instructed by a series of animal mentors in the rules or "Laws" of the jungle. There is also great enmity between Mowgli and the tiger Shere Khan who killed the boy's parents. Kipling portrays the natural world, and especially its creatures, in a logical anthropomorphized manner, so entertaining to both children and adults. Rudyard and his proud, pregnant wife Carrie arrive in Brattleboro to build their dream home, Naulakha. Kipling left the hectic literary life behind in London, searching for a quiet, rural setting to raise his family and to write. The year is 1892 and the twenty-six year-old author has very little money. However, he brought with him to America something of great value - the seed of an idea, a gem of a story about a feral child raised by wolves. He wants to develop that theme in this new world. The Connolly family, Jack, Addie and their eleven year-old son Joe, are the Kipling's nearest neighbors. Jack, a struggling immigran

"Let in the jungle, Hathi, Let the jungle in"

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). English short-story writer, novelist, and poet, was remembered for his celebration of British imperialism and heroism in India and Burma. Kipling led a rich and varied life, and in 1892 married Caroline Starr Balestier, with whom he collaborated on a novel, The Naulakha (1892). The young couple moved to the United States where they settled in rural Vermont. Kipling was dissatisfied with the life in the America and eventually took his family back to England and settled in Burwash, Sussex. During these restless years Kipling produced The Jungle Book (1894). It is the years in Vermont that forms the core of The Jungle Law, a delicately written meditation on literature, hardship, and the callous beauty of the natural world. Kipling at twenty-six, is full of the passion of youth, and while he comforts and consoles the heavily pregnant Caroline, he tries to obtain literary inspiration from the quiet beauty of the surrounding countryside. Just down the road lives the Connolly family, Jack, Addie, and Joe, their 11-year-old son. They're poor, simple folk, who have spent most of their lives scraping a living from off the land. Joe helps Jack milk the cows and other chores, while Addie takes in Caroline's ironing. For Joe, this life is the only one he knows; this place with its harshness and its meager rewards, it's the very nexus and definition of home as he knows it. Initially distrustful, Joe is gradually seduced by Kipling, beguiled by his stories of Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, Shere Khan, a ferocious Bengal tiger, and Baloo a brown bear. Compelled by whim and by instinct, he steadily falls in love with the Kipling house, "a treasure trove, filled with all sorts of riches." He even begins to imagine he's just like the boy in the jungle, and that he too could recruit a forest, press all the animals into his service, and enlist all the streams and trees. After a terrible accident lays Joe up for several weeks, Jack and Addie are forced to shoulder much of the burden of running the farm. And with winter fast approaching there is much to be done. Busy with the tasks of harvesting, Jack is indifferent to Kipling, and jealous of the man whom he feels has stolen his son's attentions away. Along with an all-consuming rage and desire to be rescued, Jack feels as though he is saddled, compromised and drunk, forced to pull the teats of cows while his wife takes in other men's washing and his son looks down the road longingly "yearning to be the friend of a man who can't even drive his own trap." Joe sees all his life as a "harbinger of frost," while Jack tries to control all the indignant, put-upon and self-righteous fury he's been grooming and feeding. He sees Kipling as intrusive and absurd with his condescending airs, trespassing to make those insidious inroads into his mind and his son. When Jack actually sees what Kipling can give Joe, he realizes that he can offer his son nothing except his indignation and san