Archive for the ‘Fiction: Memoir’ Category

Zamba by Ralph Helfer

ISBN: 0060761326
272 pages
published in 2005.
October 12nd – November 28th.
You can buy this book at this link.

I want so badly to really like this book but some innate creep factor is putting it off for me. I think part of it may be the writing style of this book, but I can usually get over that if the story is especially good and the author just failed in his ability to explain that. Sometimes the story gets me through it. Not so much here because a lot of it seemed so forced and so… well… extravagant isn’t the word I’m looking for but it’ll have to do.

Zamba is about animal trainer Ralph Helfer’s lion (title) who he raises with ‘affection training’. It’s basically an ‘oh my god, read this heartwarming tale about a man’s love for his animals’ which has its place and all but this time it falls a little flat, and just seems SO far-fetched in places. I am constantly questioning the validity of memoirs though so don’t listen to me. I actually kind of feel like Helfer is a spiritual nutcase now.

The book is fun reading though, no matter how poorly written and how… um… nuts he seems. But I enjoyed it so. Yeah. Shrug.