One of my favourites and still a great read (The Lost World - Arthur Conan Doyle)

Member Name: darren55

Product:	The Lost World - Arthur Conan Doyle
Date:	15/09/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and a cracking story

Disadvantages: None

I've always loved this novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, its been a favourite of mine since I was child and I've only just read it again and enjoyed the whole thing once again but for subtedly different reasons from childhood memories of the novel.

Synopsis of the novel

The book is written in the first person by a journalist Edward Mallone, a Irish rugby international who is trying to make his mark as a journalist (remember those days of amateur rugby players), he plays for Blackheath and is given a commission to interview the infamous Professor Challenger.
Challenger is a bristly aggressive professor of natural history and has been claiming over lost lands teeming with improbable creatures. Challenger is a short but hugely strong character who tends to brow beat his opponents into agreeing with him. Mallone and he clash, but the evidence presented appears to back up Challenger's outrageous claims.

Challenger then invites Mallone to go to the lecture due to be given by his great rival Summerbee at the natural history museum that night. Mallone agrees and goes to the seminar, here we meet the third great character in the novel in the imperious pompous Professor Summerbee. Summerbee is thin, humourless and a career scientist happy in his lab and never venturing out of his institute. He's a complete contrast to Challenger, but both are similar to Professors I've met at university but Summerbee is more similar to the vast majority of Professors at any university.

Summerbee gives his lecture but its constantly interrupted by Challenger, Challenger eventually provokes a response and Summerbee in a moment of exasperation challenges Challenger to back up his findings by sending a mission headed by Summerbee. Challenger readily agrees but asks for independant scrutiny and Mallone finds himself standing up and volunteering, also volunteering is the final character in the novel Lord Roxton. Lord Roxton is a classic white hunter in his forties, he's a hunter with independant means and few scruples.

The team set out and have instructions from Challenger about where to go and eventually arrive in South America and rather than receive the next set of instructions are infact met by Challenger who joins the party.

The novel then begins in earnest, its written in terms of letters of Mallone to his editor at the paper. Conan-Doyle as with all writers at the time tended to post his story in a weekly section in a magazine so each chapter is a little story in its self. The chapter will always finish with a climax and a worry that the writer may not be able to send any more letters and therefore continue the narrative. The narrative always continues and because its always depicting past events, you know the writer has survived the horrible events described in the chapter.

Thats the nuts and bolts of the story, the book can be read as an adventure novel with a group of British/Irish victorian adventurers venturing into dark jungles and encountering strange creatures. The book when your a child is a delight in this way, it has lots of excitement and interest, it features hostile natives, dinosaurs, pterodactlys, serpents, treacherous guides and hostile apes. Each chapter is as I said a little adventure on its own and ends with a decent cliffhanger, but each time the story resumes and cracks along at a decent pace.

However, read it as an older reader you get more of a sense of tongue in cheek poking fun at the victorian drive to get to know these dark and dangerous places. Everything described is larger than life, this extends to the four main characters, Challenger is the bristling Professor, Summerbee the classic museum curator, Mallone the fighting fit journalist describing the news and Rexton the white hunter, weathly and without too many scruples.

I loved this aspect of poking fun in some ways at the novels written about discovering Africa and South America, it parodies the attitutes of the white man to the natives, Rexton in particular is a character who on the surface is a bit of a nasty man, he shoots, starts fights and will do anything for the empire. However, scratch the surface and he has a more rounded character than you first notice and at the end ends the character I enjoyed most reading about.

This is still one of my favourite novels, it has a great mix of Indiana Jones, dinosaurs, victorian short term planning and the view of the world by Victorian adventurers being a place to impose Britishness rather than learn from the natives. I found it fast flowing and at only 270 pages can be read in one or two days and thoroughly enjoyed on many levels.

The ending is also really good and fun, and all the characters appear again in future novels.

Summary: One of my favourites and still a great read