As Moon Tiger opens,
76-year-old Claudia Hampton is in hospital, dying of cancer. Having
made her career as a popular historian and war correspondent, she
decides to write "a history of the world . . . and in the process, my
own. . . . Let me contemplate myself within my context." That
history will reveal a Claudia with vulnerabilities and secrets her
family never suspected.
Introduced early in Claudia's narrative are her adored, simpatico
brother Gordon, their conventional widowed mother, Gordon's boring wife
Sylvia, Claudia's long-time lover Jasper, and Lisa, the daughter they
consider dull and don't really understand. Vulnerable is not a word any
of them would use to describe Claudia. Tough, acerbic, strong-willed
would be more likely. Not until a third of the way into the narrative
does Claudia get to the secret "core" of her life's story. Working in
the atypically female role of war correspondent in the North African
desert in World War II, she had a brief, intense affair with British
officer
Tom Southern. His death devastated her, and she has kept him a secret
for four decades. Now remembering Tom in poignant detail, she reveals a
more sympathetic self than she presented to the world.
Moon Tiger is
lyrically written, mostly in the first person, with other voices
interjected here and there so that readers can see things from other
than Claudia's point of view. It won Britain's Booker Prize.
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