She (2006)

By H Rider Haggard
I have a vague memory of seeing the film of this book, probably from when I was about 12, something about a woman stepping into a pillar of blue light and shrivelling up into a very old woman. How could I not want to read the book?? So, finally I got around to it.

Written by the same author who wrote King Solomon’s Mines and other tales of derring-do, She sees our heroes, Holly (a bloke, not very attractive, by his own admission, about 40-odd, the narrator of our story) and his adopted son Leo (very attractive, twenty-five, not quite as brainy and wise as Holly) travelling to deepest darkest Africa in search of a legendary race of people (the Amahagger) and their legendary Queen, Ayesha, who is said to have lived for thousands of years on the wild plains of Kôr. (This is the titular “She”, always italicised and short for “She-who-must-be-obeyed”; yes, this is where Rumpole got it from).

Our heroes know about all of this because of the writings on a ancient potsherd and various other bits and pieces left to Leo by his birth father, all contained in a locked chest with strict instructions not to open it before Leo’s 25th birthday. (And in true Victorian fashion, they even stop to have a cup of tea before opening it – obviously those Victorians would have passed the delayed gratification marshmallow test with flying colours, but I fear those Victorian adventurers could have waited so long for the second marshmallow that the original marshmallow would have rotted away, if such a thing is possible. I mean, imagine if the delayed gratification tester went out of the room and got hit by a bus? They might have waited for ever! Certainly the Victorian adventurer would never survive in a modern movie version of such events).

Anyway, Leo is apparently descended from Kallikrates, an ancient Greek priest loved by She but (mysteriously) also murdered by her. I think we can all see where this is going, can’t we? So Holly and Leo struggle through wild seas, fever-filled swamps and fight off dastardly natives (who speak Arabic, interestingly enough, which when translated into English for our benefit, contains lots of “thees” and “thous” and "didst thy knowests" and so on, which I must say was a little tiresome) who would kill them by putting a large red-hot cooking pot on their head, before eating them for tea, in order to find She and (supposedly) avenge Kallikrates death. Amazingly, it turns out that Leo is the exact image of Kallikrates!! Who would have thunk it??

This book is interesting in that Ayesha is not presented as evil – both men fall in love with her, although Holly concedes it might be because she is so amazingly beautiful and nothing to do with her brain, which is in pretty good shape, it must be said. (Ayesha holds her own in lots of philosophical discussions about right and wrong, good and evil, life vs. death and so on). In fact, Ayesha reminded me a lot of Akasha, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Dead – a two-thousand-year-old babe with a brain, neither truly good or bad, but wrapped up in her own desires. I wonder if Rice may have been influenced by Haggard? Anyway, call me Alisha from now on, obviously this style of name has got something going for it.

Rating: 6 out of 10