What the tortoise knew

TIMOTHY; OR, NOTES OF AN ABJECT REPTILE

By Verlyn Klinkenborg

Knopf, $16.95, 177 pages

In the late-18th century, curate and naturalist Gilbert White took to writing a natural history of his parish. Within the thick, patchwork volume that became “The Natural History of Selborne” — in print to this day — are his close observations of plants and animals, time and seasons and gentle speculations about how the world works. In it also is the following passage, which serves as the preface to Verlyn Klinkenborg’s remarkable new book:

A very intelligent and observant person has assured me that, in the former part of his life, keeping but one horse, he happened also on a time to have but one solitary hen. These two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a lovely orchard where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs: while the horse would look down with satisfaction and move with the greatest caution and circumspection lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus, by mutual good offices each seemed to console vacant hours of the other …

Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, 1789

Along with his observations about the doings of horse and hen, White also wrote about a tortoise who lived in his garden for over 13 years. White called the tortoise Timothy, and closely followed the patterns of his days among the other creatures who lived at Selborne.

Now, in this fanciful novel, Mr. Klinkenborg gives Timothy a chance to talk, and what the engaging reptile has to say will stay with readers long after they close the pages of this astonishing book.

Timothy begins:

“I was gone for more than a week before they found me. A rustling in the bean-field, heavy steps nearby. A shout — the boy’s voice — more shouts. Thomas catches me up in his hands with sickening haste. I weigh six pounds thirteen ounces. He lifts me as though I weigh nothing at all.”

Driven by “antic blood,” Timothy’s escape through the wicket gate of White’s garden forms the central action of the book. Though readers come to learn that Timothy’s narrative in fact begins nine years after that big event and after “forty-four years spent among the humans” it is escape and freedom to which the tortoise will return throughout the narrative.

Story Continues →