Author: Paul (Page 154 of 188)

On the Marshes by Carol Donaldson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The marshland of the north Kent coast has long been recognised as one of the most important natural wetlands in Northern Europe and it is thought to host around 300,00 migrant birds as they travel from Africa to the Arctic, the marshes are also a natural flood protection for London. There are many positives to modern living, warm and dry homes, running water, electricity and fast internet. However, some choose a simpler life, and Carol Donaldson was one of those. Working for the RSPB on the Thames Estuary she lived in a caravan beneath a willow. It could be tough at times, cold winters froze the pipes, storms would frequently knock out the electricity, but within a few feet of the door, she was immersed in the local landscape. This uncomplicated life was about to come to an abrupt end; her relationship with her partner Connor was unravelling and the powers that be decide that she cannot live in her caravan anymore. She is about to be evicted.

The wild beauty of the marshes has drawn many who wish to live on the fringes of society or escape from the claustrophobia of London. It is a classic edgeland landscape that has the remains of industry, World War Two relics and homes in amongst the creeks and marshlands. It is across this landscape that Donaldson begins to travel, partly to escape her painful memories, partly to find others who have made this their home but also to reacquaint herself with the seascape. It is a place that still faces battles though; having stopped the airport being built, the people who have come here for the tranquility of being near water will face increased pressure from corporate and government interests.

Weaving together a personal story of an author seeking comfort from the natural world is a popular genre these days which has its roots in H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. Donaldson’s writing is gentle and fluent, taking as much care over the describing the bleak landscape as she travels on foot and by boat, as she does when opening up about her past and the new direction that she wants to head. Her encounters with friends and strangers who live all over the region from Gravesend to Whitstable about the way they make their livelihoods make for equally stimulating reading. It was also interesting to learn about a landscape in the UK that I knew almost nothing about, in particular about the long history that has happened there. It has a stunning cover too, another great book from Little Toller.

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A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India by Norman Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

When people visit India, a country with over 1 billion people, their senses are assaulted by the mass of humanity, smells, colours and sights in a country that is full of life. The religions and spiritually of the country adds to the cacophony of noise as they go about celebrating the living and the dead. People from the Adivasi tribes that made up seven percent of the population of India. These peoples and the places they lived were in constant danger of being swamped by the remainder of India. This is Lewis account of his visit in the 1990’s to find these people and record the things that made them different and distinct.

Lewis’ journey to see these tribes takes him away from the regular tourist haunts. Heading far from the beaten track to Orissa and Bihar in the north-western part of India, he reaches there at a time of heightened tensions and violence from a caste war. Seeking a local guide Lewis starts to venture into the jungles in search of the tribes that he wants to discover before the modern world subsumes them. He meets the Muria people who survive by eating crocodiles, monkey and insects, a tribe who marry their teenage boys off to older women. There are the Mundas who still hunt with bow and arrow, and who find laughter offensive and a tribe that may be related to Australian Aborigines and the Bonda who wear jewellery passed down from relatives and precious little else.

His evocative writing style brings alive the assault on the senses that India is, you feel that you are there standing amongst the grime and swirl of people. The writing is detailed without being cumbersome and his ability to draw out the stories from the people of the tribes that he meets lifts this book from good to great. This is the first Norman Lewis book that I have read and it will not be the last.

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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Most people who try to predict the future get it spectacularly wrong. One person didn’t though; Agnes Nutter, witch. The book she left in 1655, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies, had been written shortly before she exploded and ruined several people’s days. But then they had been out to ruin hers. It not only predicts the day the world will end, it knows the precise time. Which if you’re interested, it will be next Saturday, shortly after tea…

Rewind several years though, and we first come across Crowley, an Angel who did not fall from heaven, more saunter vaguely downwards. He is charged with ensuring that the child Anti-Christ is delivered to the nunnery where he will be exchanged with the son of an American diplomat who is just about to be born. Crowley and Aziraphale, an angel, and after 6000 years of knowing each other, more of a friend now. They have planned that the Anti-Christ grows up never being able to decide between Good and Evil, hopefully postponing the end of the world. Except there is a muddle up. The family destined to get Warlock, receive a normal boy and Adam Young grows up in Lower Tadfield, utterly unaware of his potential powers.

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

The world is changing fast though with the approaching Judgement Day. Armies are amassing, the four bikers of the apocalypse, War, Death, Famine and Pollution are assembling, the hell hound is summoned. All of these individuals are being pulled to the military base of Lower Tatton and are being pursued by the last remaining member of the Witchfinder Army, Newton Pulsifer and the multi-great granddaughter of Agnes Nutter, Anathema Device. Will Adam use his powers to bring about the end of the world…

Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.

I first read this many years (ok decades) ago, as I was a committed Pratchett fan. I really could not get along with it back then, having ventured out of the safe(ish) Discworld, I wasn’t keen on the dark elements that Gaiman had brought to the narrative. In 2013, the next Gaiman book that I picked up was The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Something in that book clicked for me and I have ended up reading and loving all of what I have read of his so far. Then Terry died in 2015, and I decided to complete my Discworld collection and read all of his books that I had not read.

This was one of them. This time I loved it.

To have the chutzpah of taking an epic prediction of the end of the world and inject lots of absurdity into it takes some doing and Pratchett and Gaiman managed to pull this one off. The humour is still school boyish though, something that they alluded to in the introduction in my edition. It lacks character development, but the interplay between them, in particular, Aziraphale and Crowley is quite something. Having come to love Gaiman’s writing now, I can see each of their voices woven through the narrative. Sadly this was the only collaboration that they did that made it print, it does make me wonder just what else they could have produced given time. Brilliant and destined to become a classic.

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Pedal Power: Inspirational Stories from the World of Cycling by Anna Hughes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Since the bike was invented it has provided people with opportunity. It provided people who could not afford expensive methods of transport with a means of travelling further than they previously were able, it gave women freedom and has provided an energy efficient method of transport all over the world. The simple two wheeled machine has given us a plethora of bike types now. You can buy a cheap steel bike for a small amount of money or you can spend a large fortune on the latest carbon framed road bike that is almost light enough to float. We have mountain bikes, tourers, BMX, recumbents, folding bikes and the saddleless trials type. All of these bikes have their owners who have taken them to all of the continents, to some of the highest points on the globe and there are those who have gone to the furthest point from the ocean. Many have taken them around our planet, partly to break records, sometimes just for the hell of it. We have one of the world greatest sporting spectacles in the Tour de France, there is the insanity of the rampage downhill event and the metronomic velodrome.

Hughes has pulled together lots of stories on cycling heroes into this book. You can read about stars of the cycling world such as Froome, Wiggo and MacAskill as well of those who are not as well known, like Sunny Chuah and CK Flash. We hear about one guy who rode up Mont Ventoux on a Boris bike and tries to return it to London before he is penalised, another who attempts to cycle to Hawaii and tales of some of the fastest on two wheels. Most importantly we learn how the simple gift of a bicycle can give people so much opportunity through the work of World Bicycle Relief. This book is full of inspiring people who have seen their lives changed by the simple act of turning a pedal, or used it to change other lives. It is a great book for the bike nut in your life.

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The Nature of Autumn by Jim Crumley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Each season offers its own basket of delights, in winter we have the skeletal trees set against the grey skies, spring brings an outpouring of life and acid greens. Summer, such that it is, is a time of balmy days and abundant food. Before you know it, autumn is upon us once again and nature starts its most dramatic change of all. As the light ebbs, leaves start the process of leaching chlorophyll back into the tree and changing to a fantastic range of colours, the warm days are tempered by sharper mornings and the mists soften the countryside.

Autumn is one of Jim Crumley’s favourite seasons, an emotion triggered after seeing geese flying overhead when he was young. He takes us on a journey around his home country of Scotland travelling from the lowlands up into the Highlands and across to the islands to see the Autumn unfold. His travels take him to see the vast whooper swan flocks that have headed down from the Arctic, the ancient brocks that only exist in this part of the world and he seeks out the Redwoods that grow there. His keen eyes see the golden eagles that float over the mountains, the traces of otters and beavers that live in the rivers, the fleeting glimpses of deer in the woods the blur of a stoat and watching an owl float silently over a field.

There is nothing particularly profound in here, just the stories of a man who takes the time to head out as often as he can to sit and watch the world inexorably grind through the first flush of autumn to the arrival of the snows. He is great at finding the words that fill in the picture of the place that he is visiting; so much so that you feel that you are sitting alongside him at certain points as he takes in the views. As well as being a eulogy to autumn, it is a reflective book too, he takes a moment to celebrate his late father and grandfather and their achievements. It did take a little away from the main point of the book though, but it is still worth reading for his gentle, lyrical language.

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Where Poppies Blow by John Lewis-Stempel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There has been awful lot of history written about the horrors of the First World War, we have first-hand accounts from those that fought and suffered, writers who composed some of the most poignant poems and a raft of historical documents and archaeological reports that build a picture of the time. Even though the war dragged on for four years, not all of it was spent fighting. The soldiers had time away from the front lines and the misery of the trenches and when they did they found they could draw comfort from the similarities in the north French landscape to the countryside that they had left behind and that some would never see again.

For it is for the sake of the wolds and the wealds
That we die

Whenever the troops had a spare moment they would take time in between the bombs to observe the birds that were trying to eke out an existence in the war too. It was one of the most popular hobbies of soldiers. Flowers played a large part in soldier’s lives too, some had time to plant and tend gardens, but the image of poppies and cornflowers blooming after the devastation of war is one of the enduring images that remained with the shattered soldiers leaving the battlefields. Some of the officers also hunted, spending hours chasing what little wildlife was left in the fields, some made rods to fish, other took the easier option of dropping bombs in the rivers. Not only did the British Army empty the fields of the workers, they took the horses too, and when they had almost all gone, they shipped them over from Canada. The soldier’s relationship with their equine friends was made closer by the perils of war. In total eight million horses, donkeys and mules died during the conflict, a horrendous number. There were also a huge number of other animals at the front too, the battalions had their mascots which varied from the fairly common dogs, to the less common goats to the frankly unusual orang-utan and cows. Rats and lice were endemic in the trenches causing yet further misery to those knee deep in mud.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row

Lewis-Stempels book is a very different take on the usual histories of the First World War. It is full of personal stories of the way that the soldiers saw nature and how it gave them the motivation for them to carry on in the darkest of times. The prose is almost secondary in this book, as there are so many poems and anecdotes about the natural world around them that he has collected together. It is not all grim reading, there are some really positive parts to the book, but I thought the list of those scientists and naturalists that had fallen in action was most moving as it showed how much experience and knowledge that we lost just from one small sliver of society. The war that had taken so many of the fit and able men showed that they still had their humanity.

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Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir by Chris Packham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Chris Packham is a well known presence on our TV screens, presenting The Really Wild Show from 1986 to 1995 and most recently Springwatch. He is passionate about all things wildlife and conservation, an interest that stemmed from early in his childhood where he developed a fascination with all creatures great, small, dead and alive. His introverted personality meant that he was a boy who didn’t fit in with anyone else at school; he was bullied, beaten up and suffered in some way every day. He was an indifferent pupil, but with the subjects he loved, he excelled at them.

Where Packham felt most alive though was when he was interacting with the natural world. He felt a connection to every creature that was living and had a fascination with those long departed like dinosaurs. His bedroom was a cross between a zoo and a museum with jam jars full of frog spawn, snakes in fish tanks and drawers full of skulls, eggs and deceased insects. He would spend hours outside looking for specimens, poring over his collections and boiling carcases to get to the bones. But the creature he most coveted was a kestrel, a real live kestrel, and one day he was to realise that dream. Every magical moment that he spent with the bird learning how to train it and observing it in the tiniest detail was to be the time he finally felt at peace with the world around him.

This moving memoir is written with an intensity that is so very different to anything that I have read before. Packham is eloquent with an attention to detail that is quite astonishing, you could say that obsession is his middle name, but it is not surprising when you learn he suffers from Asperger’s. His parents were gracious and tolerant with the way that he saw the world and the way that it saw him, but the way people failed to understand him did intensify the internal conflicts he suffered from. Woven in are accounts of his meetings with a phycologist, where he takes the tentative, painful steps of opening up to a stranger and it is where we learn of his greatest fears and those moments where he has stood at the abyss. If there was one flaw for me, it was the way it was written in the third person. It felt like he was detached from the events going on, and to a certain extent he probably was, but overall it is a really good read.

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