'Monster' depicts man against rage of beasts

All Things Literary

The word "man-eater" conjures up a multitude of images: man-eating sharks that glide under the waters in a Steven Spielberg film, surfacing to snatch away a young bather or a grizzled boat captain; it coungures thoughts ofa frenzied school of needle-toothed piranha that can reduce a human body to bones and gristle in a matter of minutes and a mountain lion slipping like a ghost into a camper's tent for a midnight snack.

For author David Quammen, the concept of animals as man-eaters is rooted just as deeply in the mythology and culture of human history as it is in the everyday interactions between mankind and animals. His latest work, "Monster of God," is a little bit of everything — part biological analysis, part travelogue, part cultural and historical commentary and part adventure tale.

This makes it a bit of a struggle for readers not accustomed to scientific works. But, on the whole, Quammen's work holds up as an insightful and thorough examination of those particular creatures that can remind us, with brutal matter-of-factness, of our precariousness at the top of the food chain.

For the most part, Quammen remains within the boundaries of the four creatures that make up the core of the book. Sadly, there are no extensive discussions on the great white shark, a creature whose reputation for flesh eating demands a chapter of its own.

The first group is lions, with particular attention given to the author's travels to a wildlife sanctuary in the Kathiawar Peninsula of Gujarat in India. Here, the reader gets a sense of a once-plentiful animal whose population drastically has been reduced as a result of both colonial lion hunts and an ever-expanding Indian population.

From there, Quammen travels like a biology-obsessed Indiana Jones or a versatile Crocodile Hunter to the opposite end of India and subsequently Australia for encounters with crocodiles. There is a sequence late in this section involving a nighttime crocodile hunt that easily steals the show from the rest of Quammen's exploits.

Romanian bears and Russian tigers are the two remaining animals on Quammen's list — each with their own distinct history. One of the author's more welcome digressions mentions the battle between man and beast in myth and posits that the monster Grendel and his mother from "Beowulf" could have been exaggerations of bears.

We also have the political history of Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu, the cinematic "Alien" saga and the appearance of the Leviathan in the book of Job in the Bible. Some digressions work; others make one wish Quammen would put the focus back on the titular monsters of God.

Yet, for such a pessimistic title, Quammen makes sure to note that these particular animals are by no means enemies of humankind with a nefarious agenda to consume our women and children. If anything, these animals are the real victims of the work, living in environments that become overtaken every day with human beings, to the point where violent interaction between the two species is inevitable.