Uncle Shelby Spins a Skewered Story in Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back

A lion is a fierce predator, but in the match-up between teeth and claws and a gun, the gun usually wins. This begs the question of how things might go if the lion had a gun as well. Shel Silverstein answers that query with Lafcadio: the Lion Who Shot Back.

Lafcadio is a young lion when the story begins. He's naive and spunky enough that when hunters first come to his area, he doesn't run. Instead, he goes up to meet one of them and try to speak with him rationally. When he finds that the hunter has no intention of treating him considerately, he gobbles him up, takes his gun and practices shooting. Of course, he has to gobble up more hunters in order to keep up his supply of ammunition, but since they're always coming around that's no too much of a problem. Before long, he's an expert marksman and the pride of his pride, until he is discovered and he goes off to perform in the circus, becoming more human all the time. By the time he returns, he's wearing clothes and walking on two paws. Can he ever return to his old life now?

This is a strange book, not least because it contains 11 chapters, each of which is several pages long. Scattered liberally throughout the book are Silverstein's line drawings, which will look familiar to any fans of his work, but the chapters contain quite a bit of text nonetheless. What's more, quite a lot of it is narratorial rambling. The book is narrated by Uncle Shelby, a moniker Silverstein used on occasion. Uncle Shelby seems to have a bit of trouble keeping track of what he's saying. Witness this passage in the first chapter: "...And they started to run. Lickety-split, lickety-clipt or clippety-clop, clippety-clop, or is that the way horses run? Well, they ran whatever way lions run." These tangents are common. The book would be a lot shorter without them, but I find them amusing, much like Lemony Snicket's asides in A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Lafcadio is a perfectly lovable lion in some ways. He's polite. He has an unnatural fondness for marshmallows. He is extremely talented. But because of the form this talent takes, Lafcadio is a pretty violent book. Silverstein doesn't linger on any gruesome details, but the body count is pretty high. Also, once Lafcadio gets to the city, he constantly uses intimidation to get what he wants. Whenever someone objects to him doing something, he roars, and the objection evaporates. I can't decide whether this is a good thing - protesting unfair policies - or a bad thing - bullying others.

Lafcadio is a strange, whimsical, sad and violent book. Its inconclusive ending seems to say that it's impossible for someone to live in two worlds at once, and having been immersed in both, neither may seem satisfactory when the two meet again. Like The Missing Piece and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, this book really seems to be geared more towards adults than children, with its heavy themes and surfeit of death. I probably wouldn't recommend the story for anyone under 12, but older readers who like the skewered side of Silverstein should enjoy this tale of a lion who wouldn't be put in his place.