The Rhino Keeper - Jillian Forsberg - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Jillian Forsberg

GENRE: Historical Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: October 22, 2024

RATING: 2.5 stars

In a Nutshell: A dual-timeline novel, with the historical plot based on a rhino being taken from India to Europe in the 18th century. Great story, average character development, good research for some of the content, too much telling instead of showing. Might work better for you if you prioritise the plot more than the writing style, because the (historical) storyline is amazing. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

2022. When American college student Andrea, studying abroad in Holland, discovers an old document in a secret compartment of her dorm desk, she is surprised to see it mention a rhino, which is not an animal found naturally in Europe. While working with her team exhuming some old graves because of a flood threat, she stumbles on to another unexpected rhino-related discovery. What happens next?

1740. Dutch ship captain Douwemout van der Meer (known as Douwe) has often traded Indian goods and even exotic animals from Calcutta (present-day Kolkata) to Europe. But he certainly doesn’t expect being given charge of an orphaned rhino calf called Clara. Surmounting many challenges, Douwe manages to take Clara to Europe with the help of his Indian lackey, a Bengali boy named Zubin. What happens next?

The story comes to us in the alternating third-person perspectives of Andrea and Douwe.

PSA: Don’t read the Goodreads blurb. It reveals almost the entire plot!

Bookish Yays:

🦏 The prologue. It is so refreshing to see a FMC know her mind, not accept so many red flags in a relationship, and declare a vehement ‘No’ to the question asked. (If only she had stayed this sensible throughout the book!)

🦏 The unusual historical story, which is based on actual events. A part of me was heartbroken to see an Indian rhino taken from her homeland this way, but we can’t change history, only learn from it. No use applying modern sensibilities to the 18th century, when it was common for animals to be hunted for fun or to be shipped abroad for the entertainment of white Europeans. From all accounts, it does look like Douwe took good care of Clara, so that’s that.

🦏 Clara the rhino. I hate her name (an Indian rhino named Clara – sheesh!) but love everything else about her. Through Clara’s arc, we learn several fascinating facts about rhinos and their behaviour.

🦏 Even beyond the rhino trivia, there are many historical facts and personalities integrated into the plot. This makes the story feel even more authentic.

🦏 Douwe and Zubin are interesting characters. An unusual pair because of their differing ages, nationalities, and social status, but united in their fondness for Clara.

🦏 The reference to the Dutch colonial rule in India. Almost all stories set in this country during the colonial years focus on the “British Raj”, forgetting that the Dutch, the French, and the Portuguese (who were the first to arrive) were also present in India around the same time, albeit colonising relatively smaller territories. This story doesn’t focus much on the history of the Dutch rule, but it does offer some glimpse of their time here.

🦏 The ship journey carrying Clara from Calcutta, India to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. This was in the pre-Suez canal days, so the route went around the tricky Cape of Good Hope. The voyage is captured really well, be it the navigation of the ship, the challenges of such a long travel period, and the employee and living conditions.

🦏 The ending of the historical timeline. Somewhat bittersweet but works nicely for the plot.

🦏 The author's note, which elucidates her writing choices excellently. She’s a historian, so it is not a surprise to see her get the historical aspects related to Clara and Douwe’s journey right.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🐐 As mentioned above, the research of Clara and Douwe’s story is impeccable. However, the India-related segments aren’t that accurate. Zubin’s tone of speaking isn’t as deferential to Douwe as a boy in his position would typically use. Moreover, no Indian servant boy would call Sichterman, his employer and a high-ranking naval officer, by his surname. There’s no word called ‘kanasmah’; the plot possibly wanted to use ‘khansamah’, which means ‘steward’ or ‘butler’. Indians are not vegans but vegetarians. (And this isn’t even true of all Indians. More than half the country ate/eats nonvegetarian food in some form or the other.) There is a subsequence related to an Indian statue, where all clues point at the statue being that of Goddess Kali, but the characters confidently declare it to be that of Durga. (Technically, both are avatars of the same goddess, but their physical manifestation is quite distinct and not substitutable with each other.)

I cannot make any declarations about the accuracy of the Dutch rep, but honestly, if there were so many errors in the Indian depiction, it generates doubts about how precise the Dutch portrayal would be. But one thing I can highlight: Douwe’s practice of referring to a married woman (and a stranger to him) by her first name immediately after their introduction seems anachronous to the era.

🐐 The historical story is the main attraction, though the plot gets somewhat episodic and slightly repetitive after a point, detailing the various places and people Douwe visits with Clara and Zubin, and the local reaction to the playful and perennially hungry rhino. The contemporary story starts off well, but functions mainly as a framework to keep the past story going. It doesn’t contribute much value to the overall proceedings other than that singular purpose of filling in the gaps in the historical events.

Bookish Nays:

🦴 Let’s face it. This is an overly romanticised portrayal of colonialism. Not a single derogatory remark or corporal action against Zubin by virtue of his racial background? Every Indian being met and approached by the whites as an equal? Impossible!

🦴 Andrea’s thinking seems to be rather black and white, and she is quite judgemental as well. Something about her character rubbed me off the wrong way. I didn’t get why she had so much trauma about taxidermy as a whole, when it is only certain taxidermy practices that are ethically wrong. She also seems surprisingly naive about the historical treatment of animals, especially considering her eidetic memory and educational background.

🦴 The character development in the contemporary timeline is weak. The content reveals only the bare necessary details about their personalities, so we don’t see any depth to their speech or actions. The way they handed the historical artefacts left me cringing. Also, it is common knowledge (at least among educated historians and archaeologists) that exotic animals were carried off by traders to Europe for the entertainment of the wealthy, so I didn’t get why this team acts almost surprised to learn such details. Plus, we get just the barebones of Andrea’s backstory, which is strange considering that she is the pivotal character of this timeline. Andrea’s mom is often mentioned but we don’t even know her name or where she stays or how exactly she is disabled.

🦴 There is a lot of telling instead of showing in both timelines. The random insertions of outfit or physical trait descriptions, even in between conversations, breaks the flow of the scene. In the historical timeline, there is an overdetailing of the clothing and the architecture. Plus, emotions are highly (melo)dramatized. It is especially odd to see words like ‘blushing’, ‘trembling’ and ‘shivering’ applied to (historical) men’s reactions in perfectly ordinary situations.

🦴 There are sequences in both timelines that focus on physical attraction between characters not in a relationship. These are quite forced in and awkward to read. Imagine being in between a serious professional discussion with your new colleagues and suddenly staring at a man's "full lips" and feeling “heat rise in the belly." If a male character had been written this way, it would have been a big red flag against him. Why are women characters allowed to get away with such objectifying behaviour? Romance novels can get away with such questionable writing choices, but not serious fiction.

🦴 The final section of the contemporary timeline jumps the shark by opting for a sudden swing in genre. This was out of the blue, and didn’t make any sense overall.

Bookish Doubt:

🤔 Can a body buried in the 1770s (in a coffin) last till the 21st century? I was surprised when one of the graves exhumed by Andrea’s team revealed an almost intact skeleton with even some patches of their clothing left. Considering that this cemetery is in a flood-prone area, it was slightly unconvincing. But I’m not sure about the embalming practices of the Dutch or the sturdiness of their coffins in the 18th century, hence this is a doubt and not a nay.

All in all, this is still a commendable debut that doesn’t overload my proverbial kitchen sink with too many themes but keeps its focus (mostly) straight. In all honesty, I am wary of books set in historical India and written by Western authors because the depiction is almost always flawed and/or whitewashed. But my curiosity to learn more about Clara made me succumb this once, and in this aspect, I was well rewarded.

Mine is an outlier review. The fact is that most readers mainly look at the plot. So the areas that I found lacking might not bother many, as the rating clearly proves. Most of the issues I had with the plot could have been resolved by a round of developmental or proofing edits.

Recommended (though not with gusto) to those looking for an unusual historical story based on true events and are not too finicky about writing style.

2.5 stars, rounding up wherever applicable for Clara.

My thanks to History Through Fiction for providing the DRC of “The Rhino Keeper” via NetGalley and LibraryThing. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.