Catherine MacLaine’s memoir A BILLION BLUE WILDEBEEST recounts a childhood in Africa in the early 1970s and a relationship with a cat decades later. Forty-two years later, to be precise. The Canadian-American revisits her hometown in Tanzania and recalls a childhood in the wild, where she encountered elephants, a lion, and the billion wildebeests in the title. During the bucket-list trip, she adopts a stray brown tabby street cat who reminds her of the man-eating lion she had an encounter with as a kid, discovers the feline has a neurological problem that causes issues like incontinence, and seeks to find out if there’s a cure to the disability.
The Montreal native has an affinity for wildlife, as evinced by her solicitude for caterpillars as a young girl in her native Montreal before packing off to Africa because her stepfather was reassigned there for work. The author remembers an impressive degree of detail that brings her anecdotes to life, like when she got three Snoopy Band-Aids after getting her vaccines.
Details animate the prose, as with an evocative description of an African sunrise and its “glorious beams of gold, copper and purple that transitioned into periwinkle.” The writing effectively deploys literary techniques like alliteration, as with a description of a plane flying past Mount Kilimanjaro: it “descended below the canopy of wispy cirrus clouds.”
Polylingual dialogue rings with authenticity, sounding like how people actually talk. It nails stuttering, sentences trailing off, and other common verbal tics. Despite being told from an outsider’s perspective, the book seeks to engage with the language, culture, and people. It’s suffused with a genuine fondness for Africa, especially its wildlife.
The memoir is leavened by a light-hearted sense of humor, as when describing her cat Stanley’s copious excretions—which are so profuse she calls in a psychic at one point. A BILLION BLUE WILDEBEEST explores the bond between a person and an animal, capturing the depth of love for her cat. Her patient caregiving gives the book its heart, and her quest for a cure its overarching storyline. The voice is generally winsome but can reach pathos when necessary, as when mourning a Tanzanian child killed by a lion or a taxidermized wildebeest that evoked a flood of childhood memories.
The book ends with a thoughtful rumination on the author’s time spent in Africa, the cat, and her mission in life. Like the rest of the book, it weaves together the seemingly disparate subjects into a cohesive whole that transcends the sum of its parts.
Catherine MacLaine’s earnest A BILLION BLUE WILDEBEEST pays a heartfelt tribute to a childhood in Africa, a lifelong love of wildlife, and a troubled cat she’s trying to save. Deftly capturing the sweep of a life and its passions, this memoir serves as a fitting tribute to both the continent and the animals she loves so dearly.
~Joseph S. Pete for IndieReader