Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales

As Lewis reveals in her chatty introduction, the idea for this gathering of stories, poems and reminiscences was hatched at the""Jockey Club in the old Ritz-Carlton Hotel,"" where, after a literary gala and""several rounds of drinks,"" a group of writers regaled each other with snake tales. The end result--this anthology of some 60 selections--feels, perhaps, a little like that evening might have: bright in spots, a little dull in others, unwieldy but interesting. There are many strong stories here: classics such as the Sherlock Holmes tale""The Speckled Band,"" Rudyard Kipling's""Rikki Tikki Tavi"" and the great Emily Dickinson poem""A Narrow Fellow in the Grass"" are just a few. But some pieces, while satisfactory or even quite lovely on their own merits, begin to feel repetitive when read together, such as the snake-memory stories of novelist Gail Godwin, Eisenhower Institute president Susan Eisenhower, and Marie Ridder. The inclusion of Milton lends a certain 17th-century gravitas, but the excerpt from book nine is jarringly short. That said, many of the excerpts work remarkably well--the very brief bit from Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men, which explains how snakes got their venom, is delightful, while Kuki Gallmann's story of her son's deadly snakebite, from I Dreamed of Africa, is gut-wrenching. Lewis says that in planning the book, she sought out""stories that would illuminate the hold that serpents have exerted through the ages on the human imagination,"" and despite its flaws, this collection has enough good stuff to capture the imagination of snake lovers and ophidiophobes alike.