Category: Review (Page 80 of 133)

4 out of 5 stars

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

There comes a point in every anthropologist’s career when they have to stop looking at the academic papers or staring out the window and actually head out into the wide world. For Nigel Barley, a colleague posed the question, Why not go on fieldwork? He wasn’t sure if it was one of the perks of the job or a necessary evil like national service. Speaking to others in the department he would hear tales filtered through rose-tinted spectacles where the full horror of events in the field are tempered by time and probably alcohol…

But where to go? Africa was mentioned, and the island of Fernando Po seemed appealing, but the political situation there was deteriorating to say the least and getting shot at wasn’t on his list of things to do, so someone else suggested North Cameroon. A tribe there called the Dowayo, ticked lots of the boxes, strange coming of age rituals, pagan rituals, skull festivals and mummies. He began the task of doing more research and securing research funding. Barley needed to be stabbed by various medical professionals and two years after he started, he was on a plane to Africa.

On arrival in Cameroon, he had underestimated just how difficult it would be to get from the airport to the village. Forms were needed, lots of forms as well as being ‘aided’ by the officials who were more interested in reading the paper while the recent arrival slowly lost a large proportion of his wallet. Finally allowed entry to the country, he set about getting the provisions, an assistant and other items that he needed and headed off to the village. What he hoped would be a subtle entrance though, wasn’t when the whole village turned out to greet him.

There were lots of things that struck him immediately. Having been used to a more leisurely time of starting work in the UK, finding that the village was up and moving around 5.30 in the morning was a bit of a shock. And there was the language; he could not speak a word to begin with and as it was a tonal language he was going to struggle to do so too. But every so slowly he manages to master some of the words and amazed them by writing them down. The village slowly accepted him, almost to the point where he became an honorary resident. He started to understand more about the people and their way of doing things. Their rituals were quite unusual and one particular ceremony that made me wince quite a lot just reading it.

It is a really enjoyable book about a people that took Barley to heart as much as he did with them. He writes with a sharp wit and genuine warmth. One of the things that he speculates about is how the very act of observing the people you are there to study have an impact on the way they behave and hoehowe anthropologist can never be a passive observer. There are funny moments throughout the book, in particular, the accounts with the officials that he is dealing with and the exasperation at the speed of events in the constant battles against bureaucracy. Can highly recommend this.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Having failed to see the circumcision ceremony which marks the men of the Dowayo tribe transition from child to adulthood when he was there previously, Barley hears that it is due shortly to take place. Hot-footing it out to Cameroon again, he heads back to the village to see if he can witness this first hand. Re-installed in his square hut, that has been carefully ‘guarded’ by Zuuldibo, he picks up life there once again. It was almost like he had never been away, the friendly familiar faces popped by hoping for him to be a generous as he was the first time he visited…

However, details on the wince-inducing process of circumcision, like where it was going to take place and when, are very elusive so whilst waiting for the nod that it was on, he finds other things to do to fill the time. One on the list to do was a visit to the neighbouring Ninga tribe. It was said that the men did not have any nipples, but he felt that he needed to see this for himself and to endeavour to elicit some of the reasons behind this practice. However, his assistant, Matthieu continued to advise against travelling to this other village, but he persisted and finally got to meet the chief. He understood Barley’s desire to learn the customs of the village, but payment would be required; perhaps a large sum of francs for a goat?

This mini-adventure along with taking a primate to the cinema, the possibilities of solar power, a novel repair to his teeth, seeing the response of the village when the UN showed a short film about the perils of malaria and the influx of insects that gave the book its title. It has the same sharp wit of the previous book where we were first introduced to the Dowayo, but with a few more funny anecdotes and is a Thoroughly enjoyable sequel to his first book Like with all societies, what seems barbarous and cruel to us, is a way of life to another people. In the same way, a lot of our routines and habits are equally strange and mysterious to them and the humour that lies in the cracks and fissures of misunderstanding.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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

According to Nigel Barley’s insurance company, anthropology was not considered ‘a hazardous sport’. This was reassuring to know as the small print had been as unhelpful as ever. Whilst he now knew it wasn’t a sport that didn’t seem to make it any less hazardous given the number of drugs he had spread out in front of him.  However, he now had it in black and white before setting off to Indonesia. He was heading to the island of Sulawesi to live amongst the Torajan people for the next few months and actually following the advice that he gave to students, that you should partake in fieldwork in places where the inhabitants are beautiful, friendly, where you would like the food.

Landing at Jakarta airport he headed to the queue for those with no visa, having been assured by the embassy in London that he would not need one. The official behind the desk frowned, then grinned and he was waved through. Tired he heads to the hotel and settles down to sleep, but at 4.30 in the morning his peace is shattered by the call of the muezzin, as five mosques in the vicinity called the faithful to prayer. To reach where he was staying though would involve further travels by boat, but he finally arrives on the island where the Torajan live.

Trying to understand the people he was with and what made them do certain things in a particular way and their own rituals lead to a series of amusing stories of his time on the island, the funniest of which was the antics when he was on a horse! In a nice touch and a touch of reverse anthropology, Barley invites four of the Torajan carvers to London to build a traditional rice barn at the Museum of Mankind. As you can imagine, the questions that they had about our society were as numerous as the questions that he had about theirs.

Of the three of his that I have now read, I thought this was my favourite. Written with the same wit and self-deprecating humour as the others, you can see how his writing has strengthened over the three books too. This, along with The Innocent Anthropologist and A Plague of Caterpillars are a little more in depth than the regular travel books, but that doesn’t make them any less fascinating way of learning about another culture and people.

4 out of 5 stars

The Faceless Man has been unmasked. Wanted for a list of crimes that seems to get longer and longer, the Metropolitan Police have finally got him on the run. Detective Constable Peter Grant and his partner DC Sahra Guleed are uncovering clues that show that Martin Chorley is far from finished.

Tracing him though is proving difficult, so they are chipping away at his contacts and associates. They visit a guy called Richard Williams to ask some questions. Before they can question him to much, Chorley ensures that Williams will remain silent.  What they find doesn’t really answer anything, rather it poses yet more questions. As they follow things up, Grant realises that he has discovered something that has been years in the making, something magical and dark that has its roots 2000 years ago from the pagan past and is something that could bring chaos to the capital city.

When the bell sings, who knows what will survive after.

This is another cracker of a book from Aaronovitch with all the regular characters as you’d expect. I thought that the plot was really strong, full of subtle moments and comic touches along with the threads going all the way back through to the first books. It finished in a fast-paced and dramatic way. Again I would like a little more of Nightingale as I think he is such a strong character with a lot to offer. Liked the threads that are solved in this book, and those link onto the next ones that he is still writing.

3 out of 5 stars

Erin has been watching the likes of Bear Grylls having some wonderful adventures in some rugged and beautiful parts of the world for a few years now. Even though she is 19, she has hardly left the shores of England, but the call of the wild is too much to resist and why should all the men have the fun in the wild.

Her journey will take her from the comfortable life that she has known. Deciding not to fly and instead travel by sea and land, she heads off to Iceland, before heading across wild seas where she will see whales for the first time, across Greenland and then the vast continent of America before finding a cabin in the wilds of Denali, Alaska. Along the way she contemplates subjects as different as physics and mutually assured destruction as well as meeting some wonderful and the occasional slightly creepy person.

The isolation she has whilst living in her cabin means that she sometimes not sure what is real and what is her imagination, but she manages to survive and feed herself. The natural world flows all around her every day and occasionally spooks her, such as when she sees a bear’s footprint near her cabin. It gives her time to contemplate the mostly male and occasional female writers who have sought the same isolation.

There are a lot of things that I liked about this debut; Erin has a strong voice and sense of purpose and is a teen who questions the male hierarchy and vested interests. It was refreshing to have this type of adventure told from the perspective of a modern day earth mother. I didn’t think that the plot was that strong, but then this is a very focused journey to a particular place. Erin’s character does come across as naïve and quite vulnerable given the place where she is staying. Another thing that I thought was really good was Andrews descriptions of the land and seascapes that Erin crosses on her journey to the cabin. They are quite something else, especially when you consider she wrote them after countless hours of watching videos and youtube videos of the places in the book. Looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

3 out of 5 stars

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

It snowed this week in the UK. You’d have thought the world had ended by the headlines and chaos that the white stuff causes, but no, it is just that we are not used to it. Gone are the days from our childhood where we seem to have snow for weeks, built snowmen, had snowball fights and went sledging. But if you look back at the weather reports it was never quite as long as we thought. However we remember the weather and however inconvenient the snow is to our lives, there is an element of beauty that it brings to the landscape when it does snow.

However there are a lot of facts about snow that aren’t always true and this book by Sally Coulthard uncovers the history, science, literary and cultural in a charming way. So if you want to know who holds the record for the largest snowball fight and why an attempt on the record failed, or why each snowflake is different, what the differences are between climate and weather and how ice can tell us about them. She tells us about snow rollers, what a blind smuir is and how old the ski is. This charming little book is a perfect gift for all those that like the winter.

4 out of 5 stars

There are two places that I know well on the South Downs, Ditchling Beacon that I remember camping on one night in the late summer, and the other is Beachy Head. I remember walking up the hill to the top to look out and being terrified as a boy of going anywhere near the edge. It is Beachy Head where the American writer and artist Justin Hopper begins his book with his grandfather’s first wife, Doris Hopper, seen standing at the edge of the cliff and in the next moment then seen to be falling. This act would leave an echo in his family history that almost no one would speak of.

His journey to find her will take him along the chalk ridge from Winchester to the sea. Along the way, he meets pagans, eco-therapists and someone who knows something about crop circles. But this is not just about the people, it is also the landscape that Hopper wants to discover more about. Where I live at the moment has lots of history draped over the landscape and it turns out that Sussex is not a lot different to Dorset. There are layers and layers, some more visible than others; the landscape of cold rivers, standing stones, old churches and prehistoric remains that show how and where humanity has existed along this route and the pagan elements that existed for hundreds of years that are still present if you know where to look.

As Hopper unravels his complex family history to find out more about the tragic death that was not spoken of, he ventures into the surreal and the unknown. All the way through the book he uncovers more details about Doris, giving him a glimpse of her life and up to the point she stood at the top of the cliff. As an American with English relatives, he has some of a sense of who we are as a people, but he can also take a wider perspective too on our culture and foibles. I ended up liking this a lot without having a sense of being able to say absolutely why, but it is probably the mix of personal discovery and his explorations of the landscapes. As he travels the thousand-year-old paths over the chalk downs it really is the foundation and bedrock of the book. As a little aside, I really liked the brilliant illustrations from the artist Mairead Dunne at the beginning of each chapter.

3 out of 5 stars

This was just a chance pick up in the library, the cover appealed and the title of the collection was intriguing. That and I have been trying to read more poetry, it seemed to be worth a go. Whilst there are some poems in here that have some roots in the natural world, there are others that source material from others subjects that are unexpected, for example, Christmas, maps, milk the hare and insomnia to name a few. This approach to poems about unusual subjects means that she can play with the structure of the verse on the page.

The leaves are turning and the trees

are shaking them off. Bonfire smoke

between us like a promise lingers.

It is a very different way of writing compared to say, Alice Oswald, one of the other nature poets that I have read and I thought that it was an interesting poetry collection. As with others that I have read, there were some I loved and others I found harder to fathom, but as with all poetry, I read it seems to fill a necessary gap in my reading.

Three Favourite Poems:

The Ways, Map

Hawk-Eye

Turning

4 out of 5 stars

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

Almost all of the poetry I had read up until now has been contemplative and meditative on landscape, life and other matters that have trouble the poet in question. Vertigo & Ghost is utterly different to anything I have read poetry-wise. Fiona Benson’s new collection is divided into two parts, but before that begins with a poem called Ace of Bass. This concerns some girls on a tennis court who can feel the hormones coursing through themselves as they awaken sexually.

Hormones poured into me

Like an incredible chemical cocktail

The first part consists of 30 odd poems about Zeus. These are powerful, visceral prose that portrays him as a serial rapist, where woman are prey and sex is weaponised. The anger in these poems is quite something, but it is a response to the modern world where women are still subject to personal attacks on a daily basis.

The second half of the book is a much more personal reflection on her life, with poems on family, depression and the delights and fears of motherhood. It is a much slower pace unlike the first part that had a great sense of urgency to it,

For we are tracks in the dew

Vanishing at dawn,

We are mist, we are rain,

We are gone

This is not the easiest read for anyone who, like me, hasn’t read much poetry, but these things need to be read. I really liked what they had done with the physical layout of the words for some of the poems, it added a certain amount of dynamics to the page that added to the fieriness of the prose. I much preferred the second half of the book to the first, but it is a book I will be keeping and will read again.

My three favourite poems were:

Wood Song

Almond Blossom

Blue Heron

4 out of 5 stars

Swimming seems to be a big thing now days, there are a plethora of books about people finding solace in the waves or ponds around our country, but if you go back far enough you would find that swimming was only a male preserve and rich men only too a lot of the time. Women didn’t even get the choice, being found in the water could lead to fines or even arrest. It took until the 1930s before women were granted equal access to the wet stuff.

In this Waterbiography, Landreth explores the ways that women have pushed to be allowed to swim in the same places as men and how access was reluctantly given. She highlights those women who have taken them on at their own records across the channel and other endurance events, fought against overt discrimination just for the right to swim. In amongst these social battles are some amazing women who would not take no for an answer, some pretty dire swimming costumes and Landreth’s own personal journey swimming in lidos.

It is a really enjoyable book, and well worth reading. Landreth has a seriously dry sense of humour as well as has some fairly forthright feminist views. However, given some of the petty reasons that women were denied that right to swim, you can see why.