The Lion Communique

 The Lion Communique is a series of dark short stories. 

The writing is often superb, giving perfectly crisp details. I enjoyed lines like, “I pulled out the bayonet with less ferocity than it had gone in with.” On a surface level, it is just describing an event in detail. After additional consideration, the character’s actions are a reflection of their thoughts regarding war: that they don’t share the same excitement about it that they once did. 

The stories have a range of locations and times,  from the battlefront of WWI to the savannas of Africa. Some of the other stories also feature historical figures, like Jim Morrison.

The book is rife with witty dialogue, and as an example I will share a little bit from the short story The Father’s Son. In it, the son of a famous author works as a safari guide. When a biographer comes to interview him on his father’s life, the son recounts a story his father wrote about him. However, the son notes, in his father’s recounting he superimposed some of his own attributes onto his son. As the son recounts this, he dryly notes “He was both the father and the son,” to which the biographer quips “What about the Holy Ghost?”

The climax of this story is their encounter with an elephant, which was the goal of the hunt. The son notices something odd about the elephant’s behavior and says not to shoot. The biographer shoots and misses, thus enraging the elephant. The son then kills the elephant before they are trampled. It is then revealed why the elephant was acting odd; the elephant had a son with him. The adolescent elephant nudges his dead father with his trunk, then cries out in the most heartbreaking paragraph of prose I have read. 

Sorry to end on such a sad note. Overall, the stories are poignant, witty, and thought-provoking. I would highly recommend this collection of stories. 

Length: 242 pages

Kindle Unlimited: No

https://www.amazon.com/Lion-Communique-Jim-Cherry/dp/B0C51CHZRM