munkus's Full Review: Walter Moers - The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebea...
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear is by Walter Moers, publiched by Vintage in 2001. Moers also did the illustrations, and the book contains excerpts from the Encyclopaedia of the Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs by Professor Abdullah Nightingale.
Not since Roald Dahl has someone written such a magnificent fairy tale for adults.
It's a little known but scientific fact the Bluebears have 27 lives- and this amazingly wonderful book is a chronicle of Captain Bluebear's first 13 1/2 (as the good Captain explains in the foreword, a bear must have some secrets after all). Some Minipirates (they have woooden pegs for legs and hooks for hands and are scared of the dark) find a baby bear with blue fur floating in a walnut shell. They take him in. However, he grows too big for their ship and they dump him on an island- thus ends his first life.
Creations such as as the Minipirates and my favourite, Gourmet Island ( Gourmetica insularis ), are liberally sprinkled throughout this book and reveal that Moers has an extremely creative mind or did a lot of strong drugs in the 60s.
This is one of those rare books in which you read with a great big smile plastered across your face. Asides from being a great way to get a seat to yourself on public transport, it makes you feel good, look thinner and be more attractive to the opposite sex.
I continually gasped in awe, shock and delight as Moers springs each new creation upon in you successive chapters. Using tornadoes as public transport then discovering a community of old men living inside? Why not! Capturing a mirage city? Of course! Wave twins (the Babbling Billows) teaching Bluebear to speak? Seems logical to me.
I immediately compare Moers to Dahl in his clever names (i.e the Babbling Billows, Professor Abdullah Nightingale, Cogitating Quicksand, the poet Wilfred Wordsmith) and his incredible twist of phrase and narrative. He is also a subtle inventor of anagrams. Another parallel is the style of illustration found in Dahl's books is mirrored in Moers' own drawings in this book. And at 702 pages it's quite a book, though with big text and bigger drawings it's not as imposing as it sounds.
Everything about this book is beautiful. The design, the drawings and, most importantly, the damn good story. Despite the fairytale atmosphere, Moers skilfully also gives it the layer of tragic depth that traditionally was found in fairytales before Walt Disney got his hands on them. Some of the Bluebear's stories and experiences are genuinely moving, and you really do feel his pain and sorrow and bewilderment when, as a young bear, he is dumped on Hobgoblin Island by the Minipirates. Of course, being the charming book that it is, everything ends well and, more importantly, it's a satisfactory ending that makes literary sense.
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