Binstead's Safari

Academic anthropologist Stan Binstead is headed off to East Africa on sabbatical. Adulterous by nature, he''s irked when his wife Millie asks to accompany him. But as the couple pass through London the balance of power in their marriage begins, strangely, to shift - a transformation that becomes yet more pronounced on safari. Sometimes considered by critics as a variation on the themes of Hemingway''s ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macombe'', Binstead''s Safari was first published in 1983. ''The tone of the novel deepens into a psychological study of these two people and the subtle and complex ways in which the exotic environment works upon each of them . . . Ingalls'' style maintains the wry grace of a sophisticated romance, a control guaranteeing that the denouement will not only be inevitable but astonishing.'' Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times