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085752965X
| 9780857529657
| 085752965X
| 3.97
| 223
| Oct 30, 2010
| Apr 03, 2025
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Sep 21, 2024
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0143134248
| 9780143134244
| 0143134248
| 3.72
| 3,163
| Mar 23, 2011
| Jun 02, 2020
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Seven Years of Darkness is a fitting title for this murky and claustrophobic Korean thriller written by You-Jeong Jeong in 2015. The Prologue tells us
Seven Years of Darkness is a fitting title for this murky and claustrophobic Korean thriller written by You-Jeong Jeong in 2015. The Prologue tells us: “People would refer to that night’s events as the Seryong Lake Disaster. They would call Dad a crazed murderer. The story was so big that I, too, became famous, as his son. I was eleven years old.” For seven years, Choi Sowon, now a lonely teenager, has lived in the shadow of his father’s shocking crime. For all that time he has been ostracised because his father, Choi Hyonsu is in prison for mass murder. Hyonsu used to be a professional baseball player, but after an injury he had taken to drink. Nevertheless the murder was inexplicable; a seemingly insane act which led to many deaths. Hyonsu was charged with not only (view spoiler)[ killing the young daughter of a neighbour, and also the girl’s father, throwing his own wife (Sowon’s mother) into the river and destroying most of a nearby village - including drowning four police officers - by opening the floodgates of the dam where he was head of security. (hide spoiler)] We learn all this very near the beginning of the novel. But not all is at it seems. This is a dark and disturbing novel, which is full of twists and turns. The setting is the Seryong reservoir, Hansoldung and the small area surrounding it, on the other side of Peryong mountain from the town of Sunchon, in the Chungchong province. Those responsible for maintaining the reservoir and arboretum do not mix with the small community of about a dozen people who live nearby, and Sowon has no friends from either group. For the last seven years he has been passed from relative to relative. Everyone tries to make someone else take responsibility for the boy, as his father Hyonsu’s case weaves its way through the courts. At first Sowon thinks he can make a new start in his new home, but he is pursued by an anonymous sender of newspaper articles. The whispers start so that yet again everyone soon knows about his father’s crimes. Now the final day of execution is nearing, and Ahn Sungwhan (Sowon’s guardian whom he calls Mr Ahn) disappears. Shortly after, Sowon receives a package (view spoiler)[ containing a manuscript penned by Ahn Sungwhan, who had been attempting to make a living as a writer. It purports to tell the true story of what happened at Seryong Lake. (hide spoiler)] Much of the novel is told this way through flashback, to enable us to piece together and make sense of what happened, and to give us the perspective of most of the people involved. As more facts and suppositions are revealed, we also see that being socially ostracised is the least of Sowon’s worries; he is actually in a great deal of danger. Through the manuscript we learn the back story. Ahn Sungwhan, a diver, was working as a security guard at Seryong Lake, a ‘first-tier’ reservoir located in the remote Hansoldung village. Dr. Oh Yongje, a dentist owned the arboretum on the reservoir; and Sowon’s father, Choi Hyonsu had just been hired as the new head of security at Seryong Dam (making him Sungwhan’s boss). Seven Years of Darkness concentrates on these three men, as their inner thoughts build resentments and bristling relationships between them. Two of these men are unsympathetic characters, controlled by their anger and brutish, or drunken behaviour. The third becomes a loyal and supportive friend to one of them, although no reason is given for this. Finding anyone to identify with in Seven Years of Darkness is mostly a lost cause, but this character is perhaps one we can feel empathy for. Each of the three men has something to hide about the night of the reservoir disaster. They are all trapped in an elaborate game of cat and mouse, as each tries to uncover what really happened, without revealing their own closely guarded secrets. The females are very much secondary characters. Most prominent are the wives of Hyonsu and Yongje; the aspirational and upwardly mobile Eunju, and Hayong the cowed and bullied wife of the dentist. Each is ruled by their emotions, and lives their life as an adjunct to the males; an aspect I have noticed before in Korean literature. We see their frustrations and fears, and how this impacts on the events. There are two children of similar ages: Sowon and Yongje’s daughter Seryong. I would have liked to see more about their interactions, but they are objectified casualties, and very much secondary to the mind-games between the adults. There is terrorising, domestic violence - some of which is vicious and graphic - and a brief episode of animal cruelty as well as ongoing child abuse (i.e. bullying and brutality, not sexual). There is little let up from this, until one night when things come to a head. The plot is a finely worked web, with the devious spider at the centre signalled very early. We watch how the villain crafts and sets the threads carefully in place so that the designated victims are ensnared. The machinations of the plot are all told through the manuscript, so that we learn of this alongside Sowon, who is trying to fit all the pieces together. Personally I think the novel would have benefitted from exploring Sowon’s perspective rather than simply retelling these past events. I have no sense of how Sowon feels about his predicament. I also feel that the ending was rather rushed. I would have liked more to have been made of the relationship between past and present. The novel is translated into American English by Chi-Young Kim. It is quite a careful translation, with only an occasional lapse of tense or parts of speech (“shined his torch” irked me a few times, too). For those not familiar with name order in South-East Asian names where the surname is at the beginning, the text often helpfully says something like “Dr Ahn” for Ahn Sungwhan, which serves as a reminder. (Incidentally, as you can see, the translator has chosen to switch her name Kim Chi-young (김지영) round, and arrange it using the conventional Western name order.) As another aside, at the end I was surprised to discover that You-Jeong Jeong is a female author. I always maintain that if I can tell the gender of an author, this often acts as a indicator that I will not enjoy the book. I deliberately do not read blurbs immediately before, either, so knew nothing about this one before I began. Yet all the way through, I was conscious of an erroneous feeling that this was a male author. Am I glad I read Seven Years of Darkness? Not really. My experience of Korean literature is limited; I have only read one other book so far by a South Korean author, an eco-thriller which I much preferred. In places it reminded me of American hard-boiled crime thrillers; a genre I do not care for. However there were a few beautiful passages which hinted at an aspect I would have liked to see developed, such as this flash of memory at a critical moment for Hyonsu: “sorghum fields swaying bloodred under the moon, the ocean breeze wafting over the stalks, the glimmer of the lighthouse beyond the mountain at the far edge of the field. A boy walking through the fields, clutching his father’s shoes and a flashlight.” Seven Years in Darkness is very atmospheric in places, such as the description of a night dive through the underwater “drowned” village. There are places where there is a feeling of unreality about the whole thing: “the recurring dream he’d had every night for the last three nights was not a dream; it was reality within a dream and a dream within reality.” There is a sense all through of lost dreams, of thwarted ambitions and momentary decisions which drastically affect and wreck everything which happens afterwards. Although the plot is ostensibly about revealing the truth, we are left in no doubt that this can sometimes be a grey area. You-Jeong Jeong said that this is the core of Seven Years of Darkness: “Fate sometimes sends your life a sweet breeze and warm sunlight, while at other times a gust of misfortune. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions. There is a gray area between fact and truth, which isn’t often talked about. Though uncomfortable and confusing, none of us can escape the gray. This novel is about that gray area, about a man who made a single mistake that ruined his life. It’s about the darkness within people, and the lightness made possible by sacrificing oneself for someone else. I am hopeful that we can say yes to life in spite of it all.” For me though, in the end Seven Years in Darkness is about power, and not about “truth”. Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that there is no such thing as absolute truth: that there is no eternal and unchanging truth. “All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” We certainly see here that people impose their metaphorical truth on others in the pursuit of power. A strong sense of this comes through to me, rather than You-Jeong Jeong’s idea of light through self-sacrifice. I was rooting for a different ending throughout this book, although that could possibly be my cultural expectation. In some ways Seven Years of Darkness does not conform to the Western prototype for thrillers. As “Crime Time” said: “this powerful tale of family violence, the abuse of drink and the sins of the fathers proves fascinating as it explores a way of life so different from our own and makes powerful statements about South Korean society and mores”. The “Financial Times” calls it “an admirably tough fable about the fragile search for the truth.” The “Los Angeles Times” calls You-Jeong Jeong a “certified international phenomenon … one among the best at writing psychological suspense”. Germany’s “Die Zeit” has said You-Jeong Jeong is “rightly compared to Stephen King”, and named Seven Years of Darkness as one of the top ten crime novels of 2015. You-Jeong Jeong is hugely popular in South Korea: the “Queen of Crime” who has written four best-selling psychological suspense thrillers. The author’s work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Thai and Vietnamese. It remains at my default of 3 stars, but depending on your taste, you may well think that Seven Years of Darkness is a gripping read. ...more |
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Jul 29, 2024
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Jul 29, 2024
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0385674058
| 9780385674058
| B009KW610M
| 4.25
| 17,018
| Nov 13, 2012
| Nov 13, 2012
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Jun 19, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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0753807734
| 9780753807736
| 0753807734
| 3.80
| 10,844
| 1999
| Jan 01, 1999
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Jan 18, 2024
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B01K969IMU
| 4.89
| 9
| 1987
| 1987
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really liked it
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The author of this book was a champion of India’s big cats, who devoted 50 years to the conservation of tigers and leopards. He was also the first per
The author of this book was a champion of India’s big cats, who devoted 50 years to the conservation of tigers and leopards. He was also the first person who tried to reintroduce tigers and leopards into the wild from captivity. The author of this book was a member of a princely Sikh family, related to the Maharaja of Kapurthala, and grew up among the great forests of Northern India. He killed his first leopard at the age of 12, his first tiger at 14, and was an insatiable hunter, who shot big game as a matter of course. So which of these statements is true? The extraordinary thing is that both of them are! The author's father ran a huge estate at Balrampur, some 160 miles North of Lucknow. The family had strong British connections; Billy’s father Jasbir Singh had studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and Kunwar “Billy” Arjan Singh regularly quoted Shakespeare and Wordsworth - as well as Rudyard Kipling. Every Christmas, Billy Arjan Singh, his two brothers and other members of the family would rent a shooting block and camp in the jungle where tigers and leopards were their most prized quarry. Then, one night, having routinely shot a young leopard in the lights of his vehicle, Billy Arjan Singh suddenly felt revulsion for killing, and vowed that from then on he would protect India’s dwindling wild animals rather than hunt them. But to do this, he needed to move away from the farming country where he lived. Accordingly Billy Arjan Singh headed off across country to the north on his elephant Baghwan Piari, and discovered the perfect spot on the bank of a river, with jungle rising in a solid wall from an escarpment on the far side. It was as far from civilisation as he could go, a full 10 hours’ drive from Delhi, and he decided to settle there. After a while he built a long, low house which he called “Tiger Haven”, and remained there for almost the whole of his life at Dudhwa, on the border of Nepal. Billy Arjan Singh (1917 – 2010) wrote several books about his life, but Eelie and the Big Cats, first published in 1987, describes a few years from this time. It has an unusual structure, in that it is written as a letter to “Eelie”, reminiscing about her life, and describing what she had taught him. The insights he had from observing the unique relationships Eelie formed are surprising, and important for our knowledge of ethology. With every animal, Eelie formed a bond, and it is clear from the episodes described that each animal responded to the other as an individual, rather than as a member of a species. Eelie was a most unusual dog: a mongrel who had arrived at his lodge in 1984, when she was only a few months old. She was half starved, and wriggled like an eel, hence her name. Eelie stayed, despite the author’s reluctance to have any sort of “pet”. The two became inseparable companions, and indeed Eelie was no pet but very much her own dog, the small mongrel taking it upon herself to educate the three leopards which Billy Arjan Singh reared at his home. First came Prince, an orphaned male leopard cub, which he successfully brought up and reintroduced to the wild (now the Dudhwa National Park) in 1973. To provide Prince with a mate he subsequently raised two orphaned female leopards cubs, Harriet and Juliette, twin sisters. He never caged any of his big cats, allowing them the run of the house and its surroundings, wanting to see if their instincts would take them back to the jungle (and thus increase the dwindling big cat population). Prince did exactly that, and Billy Arjan Singh formed an exceptionally close bond with the leopard Juliette, whom he said he loved more than any human. Harriet returned to the wild and gave birth to cubs. (view spoiler)[ However, in a moment of supreme trust, she subsequently carried them back to the house, in a desperate attempt to escape the monsoon flood. Juliette herself was poisoned by villagers, who had suspected her of man-eating. The culprit was of course a fully grown tiger (hide spoiler)]. It is clear from this that this account is not a a sentimental cosy read, but a fascinating anecdotal account for those who are interested in animal behaviour. On each occasion Eelie had somehow dominated each of these big cats, not only as youngsters, but also when they were fully grown and several times her size, right until the urge to be fully in the wild hit each of them. On their visits back they would slot into the same relationship with Eelie, as she would with them. They lived on equal terms, and despite their strength and natural instincts, never hurt Eelie. She formed a unique bridge between the world of humans and wild creatures, which has never been seen or recorded before or since. Her greatest challenge was perhaps Tara. Billy Arjan Singh knew of Joy Adamson and Elsa the lioness. In the late 1950s she and her husband George had reared a litter of 3 orphan cubs from a few days old. Joy Adamson was detemined to return Elsa to the wild, and they taught Elsa to hunt and released her into the Meru game reserve in Kenya. (Elsa was only to live to the age of 5, but that is another story). In July 1976, Billy Arjan Singh acquired a hand-reared female tiger cub from Twycross Zoo in England. By now his reputation as an expert on India’s big cats was established, and also his skill as a naturalist in establishing Dudhwa National Park. He wanted to attempt to reintroduce a tiger born in captivity to the wild, and was given permission to do this by India’s then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. He did so, and she returned to the jungle to produce her cubs by a wild tiger. The book is written as a letter to Eelie, as mentioned, in nine chapters. It has several groups of photographs at various points of the book; colour snapshots taken by the author. Some show Eelie playing with one of the leopards, or the tiger, on scrubland or in the water, but my favourite one is of Harriet, (leopard) Tara (tiger) and Eelie (mongrel dog), all walking companionably in front of Billy on his daily walk around Tiger Haven. In 1976, this erstwhile hunter turned conservationist and author was awarded the World Wildlife Fund’s gold medal, their premier award, for his conservation work. It was also largely Billy Arjan Singh who was responsible for persuading Indira Gandhi to transform Dudhwa into a 200-square-mile (520 km) national park. He established the “Tiger Haven Society” in 1992. The Society’s aims include preserving Tiger Haven and sponsoring research into wildlife. He received further wildlife awards in 2004 and 2006. Billy Arjan Singh’s writing style tended to be scientific, and editors sometimes felt this was excessive and needed elucidation for a general audience. However, within his important writings is this shorter book, which demonstrates as well as any, the unique bridge which can be formed between humans and wild creatures. It is a eloquent and moving memoir; a tribute to Eelie, whom the reading public first got to know in “Prince of Cats” (1982) and “Tiger! Tiger!” (1986). The unloved, unwanted puppy he named Eelie, lived to be 13 years old. To Billy Arjan Singh she was simply “the ultimate dog”. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1443459194
| 9781443459198
| 1443459194
| 4.47
| 42,434
| Apr 14, 2020
| Apr 14, 2020
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really liked it
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No, just in case you were wondering, this is definitely not a novel with a dubious title by Agatha Christie! But perhaps it might be as well to keep t
No, just in case you were wondering, this is definitely not a novel with a dubious title by Agatha Christie! But perhaps it might be as well to keep the attitude which lay behind the American children's counting rhyme in mind when reading. All too often this posed as benevolent paternalism, in 19th and 20th century Western privileged classes and cultures. However Five Little Indians tells the experiences of five indigenous children who survived the residential school system in Vancouver, British Columbia, and follows their lives over a 30-year period beginning in the early 1960s. Once the subject matter of the novel is known, the title is no longer an embarrassingly twee colonial insult, but seems odd. It is a shock that a Cree author should the use the term “Indian” in 2021, to describe the indigenous people native to Canada. In fact Michelle Good uses the word wryly, with a bitter undertone, and continues to use the term throughout the novel. It may offend some, but it is authentic to the time, and serves to emphasise the social mores. I had heard of the stolen generations: children of Australian Aboriginal descent who were forcibly removed from their families by church missions and the Australian government agencies, right up to 1967. How appalling, I thought, for such a thing to be happening in my own lifetime on the other side of the world (I am English). But I had not realised it was more widepread, and that Canada was operating these residential school right up to 1997. The United Nations has reported that: ““Indian” vocational and residential schools have a long history in the US and Canada, with each seeking to achieve the cultural extermination of indigenous peoples. Throughout the existence of these schools, an uncountable amount of sexual, verbal and physical abuse was inflicted upon these essentially kidnapped youth.” These so-called “Indian” residential schools were also established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries, with a primary objective of “civilising” or assimilating Native American children and youth into European American culture. Canada, America and Australia all had the same aim: to bring Aboriginal peoples within the realm of western society. Thus, much of the education practice, and the very way of life in residential schools and missions and other institutions, was aimed at inculcating European beliefs in Aboriginal children. The entire basis of such schools can now be seen as misguided, but in practice it was even worse than that. Ironically, the people put in charge of such places were not benevolent (albeit blinkered). They seem to have been the worst sort of extremists; religious zealots, with the desire to punish and inflict pain on those in their charge. The internet is full of horrific stories from these institutions. In May 2021, 215 bodies of children were found buried on Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. Some were believed to be as young as three years old. Another institution, the St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Ontario took all the Cree children they could find from the Fort Albany First Nation and the surrounding area. Many former students of St. Anne’s describe experiencing physical, psychological and sexual abuse while at the school. An electric chair was said to be used “for punishment and sport”. There were hundreds of suspicious deaths between 1941 and 1972, and some adults were charged. The effect of such a brutal system on the survivors is unimaginable. Some tried desperately to avoid their children being snatched. In Five Little Indians: “Jim shook his head at us. His parents moved, taking him acoss the line to the States before the priest could come for him, so he didn’t know what it was like. His parents told him about it, because they had gone to one of the Indian schools, but he didn’t really understand. How could anyone?” In another case: “My mother had never been out of Saskatchewan and rarely left the reserve. She didn’t need to be anywhere else. That was her home and the home of her parents and grandparents back to when Treaty Six was signed by her great-grandfather, Pihew-kamihkosit, for whom our Red Pheasant reserve was named”. But this child’s aunt had married a mooniaw (a white man) and now lived a thousand miles away on the central coast of British Columbia. Because she was often alone while her husband was away in the logging camps, her sister went for a visit. It was to be a special long summer idyll for the family to be together. It is a lovely family visit, with lavish 6th birthday celebrations. (view spoiler)[ Little Howie's auntie happily passes the time of day with her Catholic priest, telling him of the birthday visit, and that the child had a place to take up shortly in a Cree school on their reservation. All seems well, but later the priest comes back with a police officer, who grabs the child and carries him away to the Indian residential school. It does not make any difference that they do not live there any longer. He is there right now, is 6 years old, and the law must be enforced. No amount of formal applications, letter writing and appeals by the mother over the next decade make any difference. Neither is the mother ever allowed to see her child in the residential school (hide spoiler)] There are many such stories, and here we become engrossed in five such, with other wretched victims of the system venturing in and out of the narrative. Some meet a tragic end. The chapters switch between the five, with flashback episodes describing their years of abuse. I did not know of the Canadian Indian residential school system, nor of the cruelties routinely perpetrated there. But for the author of Five Little Indians, it was all too familiar. Michelle Good did not experience it for herself, but tells us in her afterword that these are the stories of her mother and grandmother, both of whom were survivors of the residential school system. When the author was growing up, her mother would talk about the traumatic histories and experiences of the childen she had known, who had been incarcerated with her there. Five Little Indians is based on her mother’s experiences. Michelle Good is a writer, retired lawyer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Her poems, short stories and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies across Canada. She was born in Kitimat, British Columbia and moved to Vancouver when she was a teenager, living in that area until her early 20s, when she started working with First Nations communities throughout British Columbia. Pursuing a master of fine arts degree, her thesis became the basis for this first novel, which has won many awards. Part of Five Little Indians is set in the Red Pheasant Cree Reserve in Saskatchewan, and those episodes powerfully convey a different way of looking at the world; the perceptions and experience so essential, precious and sacred to those born in the Cree culture, but which were denied to so many who had been snatched. An outsider like me can just glimpse it: an impression of angel ancestors above the birch trees will stay with me for a long while. With Five Little Indians, Michelle Good had decided to tell the story of one child whom she called Kenny. She then realised that there were many more stories she needed to tell; many different responses and types of trauma. She needed to convey the legacy of Canada’s residential school system: the routine abuse, the broken families, coupled with inadequate education and the ongoing racist cruelty in the world outside, such as an employer who spitefully told the newly released (view spoiler)[Lucy (hide spoiler)]: “You Indian chicks are good for two things, and both of them happen in motel rooms.” But above all, the author wanted to reveal the hatred which fuelled a systemic destruction of indigenous communities, cultures, and peoples. So we meet Kenny, Lucy, Maisie, Clara and Howie, all of whom “survived” a decade or so of detention. (The inverted commas are because survival is not descriptive of the numbed or broken souls they have each become). Quite literally snatched when they were around 6 years old, they are each released individually a decade later, back into the city of Vancouver, into “that mile of broken souls I now call home”. They had to make their way as best they could, with just a few coins, no skills, no experience of life or the social system, and no support. And they were left full of fear and confusion, petrified of a society who constantly reminded them they did not want “their kind”. Not surprisingly, it was the seedy downtown Eastside of Vancouver where each landed: “the broken heart of the city. The hookers and addicts and runaway teens, johns and predators scouting their prey, all roamed the core.” Being tolerated was the best they could expect, and sometimes the safest option was to accept being shrugged off or exploited by an uncaring world. Each struggled to stay unnoticed and make a life, accepting a pittance for the work nobody else would do; cleaning up someone else’s mess, or a hard life on the road with casual work, picking crops or logging, drifting and surviving: “through the fields of Washington … picking apples, through the coastal fishing grounds, the logging camps, the dish pits and grease pits and flop houses.” Their stories begin in 1967. They are diverse, and swerve between being hardhitting and heartbreaking. Impossibly institutionalised and confused, flashes of their earlier life would come into their minds: “Where was the law then when he was beating us, breaking bones, and other, even worse things?” “I just don’t know what to do … It’s like most of me is gone and I can’t get it back.” None escape unscathed, although two of those dumped back into society eventually develop post-abuse coping strategies. They somehow create happy and fulfilling lives for themselves, rising above their early years of pain. Others though are irreparably traumatised. (view spoiler)[ Maisie takes an overdose of heroin, (hide spoiler)] never able to escape the sexual abuse they suffered in an incredibly powerful and dramatic chapter. At no point is any sexual abuse described in this book, but it is quite evident from the skilful writing and the character’s victim mentality, despising themselves and searching out appallingly rough treatment to calm the addiction, that this is what had taken place. Others too agonise internally: “Brother was bothering him too. That creep went after so many of those little boys.” (view spoiler)[Kenny dies from alcohol poisoning (hide spoiler)] never able to settle in one place, or deal with their past except by drowning their real sorrows. (view spoiler)[Howie spends several years in prison, having chanced to meet the “Father” who had regularly beaten and abused him, and assaulted him in a moment of fury. Poignantly, the prison life is familiar: “the prison routine, so similar to the one at the Mission” (hide spoiler)]. It is yet another example of being trapped by an addiction to the patterns of victimisation. None of those taken ever have a good relationship with their parents, who are equally damaged and may not survive. The starting point for Michelle Good’s novel came in May 2021 when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in British Columbia uncovered the remains of those 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The news had an profound emotional effect on the author. Based in southern British Columbia herself, and with her mother’s history, it felt very personal: “That first weekend after the Kamloops announcement was really rough. I told a friend of mine that I felt catatonic after that announcement. It’s not because we didn’t know. We did know. People have been talking about this for years and years. But there’s never been any support to resolve this …” By September 2021, more than 1300 graves had been found across the sites of 5 former residential schools in Canada. Such shameful cultural genocide is a legacy of Canada’s troubled colonial history. However this is not the place to go into what happened next. The information is easy enough to find, and my reaction echoes the general feeling of “too little, too late”. Five Little Indians was Michelle Good’s response, and although fictional, it enables readers to get a glimpe into the degradation, persecution, trauma and pain innocent children and their families suffered, for no other reason than their ethnicity. There was nothing similar in the UK, save perhaps the Magdalene Laundries, institutions usually run by Roman Catholic orders, to house unmarried mothers. These young girls were not allowed to keep their babies, nor to know where they ended up. Their daily drudgery was a punishment. But they were in Ireland, so for England we would need to go back to Charles Dickens, who based his Dotheboys Hall in “Nicholas Nickleby” on a real institution (Bowes Academy) with similar brutal treatment, starvation and gross neglect of disease. Records after a public outcry revealed that many children died of starvation, untreated disease and blindness, just as in Five Little Indians I was also reminded of another of his novels, “Oliver Twist”, in which the Beadle's response to the complaint: “The prices allowed by the board are very small” is the heavily ironic “So are the coffins.” Five Little Indians tells how on arrival an indigenous girl, suffering from shock, would be grabbed by “Sister” to: “cut her long braids, douse her in green powder and take her clothes away, replacing them with a used brown shift.” Boys would have the same treatment, although (view spoiler)[Kenny, held as a hero by the others as he regularly tried to escape, and finally did, was made to wear a purple flowered dress to disgrace him even more. (hide spoiler)] All the children, regardless of gender, were routinely shaved so roughly that their scalps were cut and bleeding: “... her body as a little child covered in bruises, her head shorn, thin to the point of emaciation.” The lesions remained on the scalps as adults - as did those from the beatings. And they were routinely starved, so that they would eat grass whenever outside, one child showing another what type of plant was safe. Any child so traumatised that they wet the bed would have the piss-laden sheet wrapped aound their head, ensuring that the other children would avoid them because of the smell. (view spoiler)[ Sister Mary’s response to the fatally ill child Lily, was to make her work even harder. And Brother regularly collected tiny Howie from his bed to beat - and probably worse - only stopping when the blood-covered child was taken to the sanitorium (hide spoiler)]. Dickens visited the Bowes Academy; he did not exaggerate, and neither did the reports in “The Times” newspaper. But Dickens was writing in the 19th century. I have no doubt that the stories shared here are equally authentic, so it seemed almost unbelievable to me that this should be happening in my lifetime, in a developed country. Perhaps you do not like harrowing reads. Neither do I, never reading true crime, or misery sagas. I dislike explicit hardhitting details. Five Little Indians is not an easy read. It is intended for adult readers and describes the abuse of children, so might not be appropriate for more sensitive readers. But there is nothing here which is gratuitous, or exaggerated for the shock element, although one early section titled (view spoiler)[Maisie (hide spoiler)] suddenly switches to a first person narrator. The details there were horrifying, and there was a lot of foul language to hammer it home. To be honest I do not think this added anything, and would have preferred a consistent approach, but it does not move the book from being a four star read for me. It is self-contained, so sensitive or easily offended readers could miss this chapter out. Mostly we infer the violence from the torment suffered by the victims. Sometimes they cannot bring themselves to remember the details, even years later. (view spoiler)[ Kenny for instance, was counselled by a fellow sufferer, Clara, now trained in Law and appointed to help, and testified in a Court prosecution, but forcing himself to remember broke him (hide spoiler)]. This is skilful writing, making us feel great empathy with the characters, and rooting for them through all their troubles. (view spoiler)[ When Clara and her dog have a desperate car chase across the chaparral, trying to get across the border to an Indian reservation, hotly pursued by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), (hide spoiler)] I was on the edge of my seat, whilst also feeling angry that anyone should have to live in an area of land marked out for them. To have land set aside for the exclusive use of First Nations, to protect their heritage, arguably sounds good in principle, but not if they are persecuted elsewhere. And the history of selling off part of the reservation lands that were rich in oil and gas reserves continued. So if you are toying with the idea of reading this, I would say be warned and take a deep breath, but go ahead. This book gives an important eye-opening glimpse into what many indigenous residential school survivors have had to endure, after living through the abuse and neglect suffered at these institutions. It is a powerful and dramatic story, full of heart, even to the next generation. It gives a voice to five solitary survivors of Canada’s residential school system. These stories are not from antiquity, nor buried in the annals of time, but in living history. “That little birch tree. Even here they shine.” “the first shot of deep orange in the leaves of the poplar trees, the silver twinkle of the birch along the creek in the pasture calming into soft fall yellow” “[She] felt the same way she had back then, with those lilting songs dancing among the shimmering birch leaves. Something that had been gone a long time filled her again, like her heart had suddenly started beating again after a long silence.” ...more |
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Oct 14, 2023
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Oct 14, 2023
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ebook
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030738246X
| 9780307382467
| 030738246X
| 4.02
| 20,672
| Sep 18, 2012
| Sep 18, 2012
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Notes are private!
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Sep 18, 2023
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0955454514
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| 4.40
| 156
| Jan 01, 2007
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0525541357
| 9780525541356
| B07KNV4RC3
| 3.95
| 123,534
| Nov 25, 2009
| Aug 13, 2019
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really liked it
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“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps o
“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves … And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.” Have you ever seen literary reviews and thought, they must have read a different book from the one I read? That was my experience with Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I knew nothing about it, but the novel was prefaced by glowing reviews such as: “A wry, richly melancholic, philosophical mystery. A compelling and endlessly thought provoking novel, luminous with the strangeness of existence.” Or how about this, from “The Guardian”: “[It] inhabits a rebellious playful register very much her own. A passionate and enchantingly discursive plea for meaningful connectedness, for the acceptance of fluidity, mobility, illusoriness” Or these words, from the LA Review of books: “This astonishing performance is her glittering bravura entry in the literature of ideas. A select few novels possess the wonder of music, and this is one of them. An international mercurial and always generous book, it can be endlessly revisited.” This summing up begins well “Strange, mordantly funny, consoling and wise” but continues “[it] fills the reader’s mind with intimations of a unique consciousness.” What does that even mean? It is tempting to use the author’s own words again, to comment on these literary accolades: “People who wield a pen can be dangerous … such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality—its inexpressibility.” Yes, in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the protagonist sometimes grapples with esoteric ideas. There is a fair amount of William Blake in the novel, and many references to astrology, but at no time did I ever feel it descended into pretentious waffle like the reviews. They were included in the ebook before the novel, so it was difficult to ignore them. They nearly put me off before I had begun, but I had it on loan for 3 weeks, so I plunged in. What I discovered was a delight. There was an embedded mystery to keep me reading, and an intelligent and quirky narrator: Janina Duszejko. (She hates her first name, so I will do as she wishes, and call her “Duszejko”, or Mrs. Duszejko. Strange that. I hate titles, and my surnames have never seemed to belong to me, but then we are all different.) Looking up the name Duszejko—which she repeatedly insists is not pronounced correctly—I learn that it means creativity, flexible, and studious. It fits this character; no wonder she wishes to use it rather than Janina, in Polish: “God is gracious”. Not that a name is often needed. Duszejko lives near a remote village in the Table Mountains of the Kłodzko Valley, a forested, mountainous region in southwestern Poland, just across the border from the Czech Republic. There are a few houses dotted around among the woods, but those who choose to live here prefer isolation, as she does. So when at the beginning of the novel Duszejko hears a knock on her door, she is startled at the rare occurence. One of her neighbours is dead, she is told. Duszejko, as I said, is not keen on names. She feels that they do not seem to describe the essence of people, so she secretly gives people her own names: “Oddball”, “Big Foot”, “Dizzy”, “Good News”, and for the deer who also live in the woods—and with whom she feels an intense affinity—her “young ladies”. Her “girls” who to her grief are no longer there, it took me a while to realise, were her (view spoiler)[two dogs, who had disappeared, but clearly been killed. (hide spoiler)] It is Oddball who tells her the news, and they both go to see what has happened and what, if anything, can be done. Big Foot is dead; with a shard of bone jammed down his throat. Since he is a despicable character who tears up the forest for his own ends, poaches wild game, and treats his pet dog cruelly, Duszejko finds it difficult to feel much regret, but they make him look peaceful as a mark of respect, and she pulls out her moblile phone to call the local police. However: “Soon after an automated Czech voice responded. That’s what happens here. The signal wanders, with no regard for the national borders … its capricious nature is hard to predict.” Phone lines seem to randomly reach the Czech Republic when it is the Polish authorities who need to be contacted. Thus begins the metaphor, in which the Czech-Polish border represents Duszejko’s sense of restriction; of being imprisoned. For a great deal of the novel, these individuals living on the edge of society make their own arrangements. There are historic traces all around of labour camps, and the regulations seem rigid and overwhelming at times. Best to be self-sufficient is their watchword; keep yourself to yourself. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is narrated by the ageing, anarchic astrologer Duszejko, who says philosophically: “For people my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there.” She spends her time devising her charts, translating Blake’s poetry, trying to make sense of existence, fighting her ailments, and haranguing the local hunters for climbing into their hunting stands, and killing the animals she loves so much. “In a pulpit Man places himself above other Creatures and grants himself the right to their life and death.” The antagonism between them is always threatening to bubble over. When one hunter attempts to calm a furious Duszejko, explaining that he and his friends are simply shooting pheasants, she feels: “a surge of Anger, genuine, not to say Divine Anger … There was a fire burning within me, like a neutron star.” I never need to identify with any character in a novel, but I felt a close bond with cranky Duszejko, right from the start, and was hit by the parallels between her life and my own. Or is this just a very skilful author? The translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones incidentally, is superb. Duszejko’s take on life is irresistible: “The best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.” “This is a land of neurotic egotists, each of whom, as soon as he finds himself among others, starts to instruct, criticize, offend, and show off his undoubted superiority.” “Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right?” However, to talk of the protagonist Duszejko and her views is only the surface layer of this novel, just as describing this book as a whoddunit, although in part true, would be. There are several deaths, and Duszejko increasingly believes with each that the animals are (view spoiler)[taking revenge, that they are the murderers (hide spoiler)]. (This was not really a spoiler, but you might prefer to read it for yourself!) There even seems to be evidence which makes this feasible, since mysteriously (view spoiler)[one victim is found in a well, with deerprints marking the snow all around him, but no other prints (hide spoiler)]. Of course this does not further Duszejko’s reliablity in the eyes of the authorities, who cannot see past their stereotypical ideas of ageing women and of those living in the cottages above the village in self-imposed isolation, as: “Old eccentrics. Pathetic hippies.” The village has a macho hunting culture; the killing of a deer is mere sport, an attitude which Duszejko considers despicable. “Anger always leaves a large void behind it, into which a flood of sorrow pours instantly, and keeps on flowing like a great river, without beginning or end.” “But the truth is, anyone who feels anger and does not take action merely spreads the infection.” Duszejko used to be a bridge engineer, and then a teacher, and now? She lives minimally as a recluse, studying astrological charts in order to make sense out of chaos. “How could we possibly understand it all?” “ … I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful.” She is deeply troubled about the world, and also chronically sick, although this is never defined, but is rather merely another thing she is resigned to, with melancholy but no self-pity. Would it help to summarise the plot? I feel that would only do this novel a disservice. You could read this as a devious mystery, with a satisfying twist, but it is about much more than the story. As the author said: “just writing a book to know who is the killer is wasting paper and time.” Using an extract of Blake’s work to begin each chapter, the text is like a series of coded messages where we grasp towards some impression we have of a meaning, but which is essentially undecipherable. I’m not usually at a loss to describe a book, but do feel myself in danger of descending into pretenious twaddle here, so perhaps I was being unfair to those reviewers. We have 17 chapters where each brief title is followed by a couplet from various of Blake’s writings. Here are the first three; I have added the unnamed sources: 1. Now Pay Attention “Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death.” (—The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: The Argument) In this chapter we get to know our uncompromising protagonist. 2. Testosterone Autism “A dog starvd at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the State.” (—Auguries of Innocence) We begin to see that each character in their separate dwelling is a loner, cocooned by their own beliefs. “The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.” None of the inhabitants relates to the others, and they relate variously to the animals around them. The way we treat—or mistreat—animals informs the way we view those fellow humans whom we consider beneath us. “From nature’s point of view no creatures are useful or not useful. That’s just a foolish distinction applied by people.” The hunters seem connected with the neighbouring Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, we are becoming aware of Duszejko’s consciousness of both political and gender repression, which she sees as mirroring Blake’s sense of how the different aspects of society are interrelated. Throughout the novel, Duszejko’s intelligence is evident to us, but not a glimmer of it passes others’ preconceived ideas of her; nor does she care. “That’s what I dislike most of all in people—cold irony. It’s a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything.” 3. Perpetual Light “Whate’er is born of mortal birth Must be consumed with the earth.” (—“To Tirzah” from Songs of Innocence and of Experience) Duszejko is committed to astrology, and gaining an understanding both of the universe and the detail, through drawing her complex and precise charts. She ponders on Perpetual Light, or Existence, or Darkness and the truths she sees in the poetry of William Blake’s esoteric poetry, which she translates with an old friend who used to be her pupil: “I see everything as if in a dark mirror, as if through smoked glass. I view the world in the same way as others look at the Sun in eclipse. Thus I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like the May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It’s easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence. I interpret everything as abnormal, terrible and threatening. I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower?” Although it was written in 2009, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was not translated into English until 2018, although there had been a film in 2017. I assume that much of the book is unfilmable, and wonder if English readers are missing some nuances. Is the Blake verbatim? It seems to be. Yet there is one episode where Duszejko and her friend are working on translating a passage of Blake. “How wonderful—to translate from one language to another, and by so doing to bring people closer to one another—what a beautiful idea.” They exchange various suggestions, where a particular verse is rendered in English which has been translated from the Polish, but which had originally been translated from English. The subtle differences and shades of meaning must have been remarkably difficult to translate back and forth, but it works well. The author Olga Tokarczuk, an outspoken feminist and intellectual, is a controversial figure in her home country. She has been castigated as a “targowiczanin”: an ancient term for a traitor. After the film came out, one journalist wrote that it was “a deeply anti-Christian film that promoted eco-terrorism”. They seem to have looked through a distorting lens. To get to the core of his book, perhaps we should simply look at the title, and remember what the visionary William Blake meant by it: “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.” This is the beginning of Proverbs of Hell, from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. This poem goes on to demonstrate the importance of questioning accepted social ideals, as this is the only manner by which new knowledge can be produced. Ultimately this is what Janina Duszejko, a unique individual, spends her life doing. “I grew up in a beautiful era, now sadly in the past. In it there was great readiness for change, and a talent for creating revolutionary visions. Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism—it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components—the senses, succumb to apoptosis. Apoptosis is natural death, brought about by the tiredness and exhaustion of matter. In Greek this word means ‘the dropping of petals.’ The world has dropped its petals.” “We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world, do you see?” ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 24, 2023
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May 30, 2023
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Apr 24, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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B08DFHG1ND
| 4.26
| 32,779
| May 2017
| Apr 22, 2021
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really liked it
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Cast your mind right back to your early teenage years … so now, what is the first thing that comes to mind about your school? Did your thoughts go stra Cast your mind right back to your early teenage years … so now, what is the first thing that comes to mind about your school? Did your thoughts go straight to your favourite subjects and the things or skills you learned? The teachers? Your best friend? The other kids? Team-mates, friends and school clubs? Day trips and school journeys? The dread of homework and exams? The long trudge through deep snow in Winter to the freezing classrooms where all the seats by the hot water pipes had already been claimed? (Sorry, that one’s mine!) It’s likely that the other kids featured quite early in your thoughts. Even if you were home-schooled, you probably knew some other kids with whom you were expected to “get on”. Neighbours, relatives, visitors … and there were probably times when it wasn’t easy. Some people have memories of school which are so terrible that they push them aside, only half-remembering, and might feel uncomfortable even reading this. And for just a few, tragically they never get the chance to have bad memories, because life is so hard that suicide seems preferable. Most of us don’t experience anything nearly so bad. Yet school lasts for so many years, with so many different encounters and situations, that we can all think of one or two which we wish had not happened. I carried my violin to and from school … and was a prime target for jeers and bullying from kids from other schools for a little while, until I was in a classroom where there was a piano, and my classmates “requested” me to play tunes they knew at lunchtimes. I was lucky; I felt included and appreciated. It even took me a while to recall this time. Others might have suffered the ignominy of regularly never being chosen for the team during sports lessons, and having to “be in reserve” or sit on the side. Or that of being a swot, and a “teacher’s pet”. Or perhaps you were one of the bullies, (shsssh!) and now do not like to think of it? The publisher’s note after Lonely Castle in the Mirror tells us: “According to a recent UNICEF report, Japanese children were ranked second-to-last in an international survey assessing children’s mental health across thirty-eight developed and emerging countries. While Japanese children were ranked first in physical health and often live in relatively prosperous economic circumstances, instances of bullying in schools, as well as difficult relationships with family members, lead to a lack of psychological well-being.” In fact I’ve read another Japanese novel with bullying as the theme, Kawakami Mieko’s “Heaven” which was translated into English a little later, in 2021 (although I couldn’t bear to finish it, as it was so intense). Bullying is evidently a huge problem in Japan. We see the world here through the eyes of a 12 year old girl, Kokoro. Kokoro is a middle school “freshman” at a Junior High school, and is in the 7th grade. The Japanese school system is evidently similar to the US school system, but the book is so clearly written that the unfamilarity of this, just as the precise naunces of honorifics, and unfamiliar national festivals and holidays, are easy to access by anyone like me, from another culture. (I’m English.) Kokoro has become reluctant and frightened to attend school, after getting bullied by her aggressive female peers. Despite her best efforts and feelings of desperation that she will not be believed, any reminder of school gives her a stomachache. Constant anxiety overwhelms her, and she might not even get out of bed. She remains mostly in her room. We learn of a traumatic experience at school which leads to Kokoro hiding in her house, (view spoiler)[fearing for her life while her bullies shout and thump on the outside door (hide spoiler)]. Kokoro increasingly withdraws into herself, and finds herself unable to communicate with her parents and teachers. “We’ll fight this,’ her mother said, her voice trembling. ‘It might be a long battle, but let’s fight it. Let’s do it, Kokoro.” But despite her mother’s gentle encouragement, Kokoro becomes isolated from the world around her, developing agoraphobia. One concerned adult understands and says: “You’re battling every single day, aren’t you?” There’s no doubt that the teenage years can be awkward and painful for lonely kids who don’t fit in. This is Goodreads though, so perhaps this thought from Kokora on “fitting in” is more likely: “She thought if she’d said she liked reading, the others would label her an introvert, so when several girls ahead of her said they liked karaoke, she copied them.” And this? “The musty smell that hit your nostrils whenever you ventured into the far corner of a tiny bookstore, the place where few people ever went. A smell she loved.” You can tell from this that the book is written clearly, and it becomes evident when reading that it is geared towards a YA audience; perhaps 15 - 17 years of age. Having said that, it is the sort of book adults can also read and enjoy, especially if you like a dash of fantasy, or magical realism. The premise is pure fantasy, but most of what happens feels very real. It is character-driven; we engage fully with the characters and are rooting for them throughout. And they really do all need someone to root for them. For it is not just about Kokoro, but about 6 other lonely young teenagers, all of whom have a problem with school. But a lonely castle? Well perhaps … there certainly is a castle, although we never see its situation. But each child is isolated for sure. And in each case their bedroom mirror is a portal to another world; a world in which to explore the fairytale castle, and meet others perhaps like them, perhaps different, but others who present no challenge and do not question them. Just as Alice in a famous fantasy classic fell down a rabbit hole and discovered a Wonderland, and Lucy stumbled through a wardrobe and found Narnia, in Lonely Castle in the Mirror seven different children wake up at 9am one morning to find their mirrors glowing. When each of them puts their hand against the glass, they are pulled through to find a huge castle, which is nothing like their homes in Tokyo. In her neighbourhood, Kokoro can see: “Houses just like the one she lived in; tall condos, apartment buildings that looked, from where she stood, like matchboxes. In the distance, she could catch the lights flickering in the supermarket.” But the castle is just like the ones she reads about in European books of fairytales; a wondrous magical castle filled with a winding staircase, a huge clock, watchful portraits, and twinkling chandeliers. Each of them also has a private room of their own, filled with what they enjoy doing, as well as communal rooms where some can be together. It is a sanctuary, where they can be by themselves if they wish, or be with the others in a lounge. They can do just as they please; even play video games if they like, as electricity is laid on. Oddly, although it is beautifully furnished, there is no water or plumbing, so any food has to be brought in. The castle is guarded by a wolf, and a little girl in a mask and an odd frilly costume explains the rules to them. She insists that they call her the “Wolf Queen”, and sets them a task. (view spoiler)[ They have exactly one year to search for the key to the wishing room. Whoever finds it, will be granted a single wish. But as soon as it is found, the castle will disappear, and so will their memories of it. If nobody finds the key, the castle will disappear on March 30th, at the end of the school year, and they will still not remember anything about it, or about each other (hide spoiler)]. Along with Kokoro, we meet the other six children who have been whisked to the castle, and get to know them. All of them have stopped attending school, because of some sort of trauma in their family or among their peers. Hence they are at home, and are able to notice their mirrors glowing. (view spoiler)[ But the mirrors only start to glow at 9am – the start of the school day - and it becomes evident that the castle is only open during school hours. During this time they are free to come and go as they please, but they must leave sharp by 5pm, or the wolf will eat them. On occasion they can hear the wolf howling when the exit time draws near (hide spoiler)]. The story is told from Kokoro’s point of view, and as her visits become more frequent, Kokoro gets to know the others: Fūka, Aki, Masamune, Ureshino, Rion, and Subaru. They are all very different, of slightly different ages, and from different family backgrounds. It soon becomes apparent to Kokoro, that each of the other children has had a similar experience, but all appear reluctant to divulge their story. There is a tacit agreement that nobody questions the others about what happened to make them avoid going to school. But we do gradually get to know snippets of their family circumstances, or how and when they were bullied. Poignantly we see that the children feel guilty for dropping out of school and missing classes, and worry that they are letting down their parents. The character affected always claims that it was not bullying, which is typical behaviour for many victims. We are even introduced to an alternative school for children who have dropped out of mainstream school. This apparently parallels the free schools which emerged in Japan in the 1980s, as a response to increasing truancy. What is unique about the castle is that unlike other fantasy worlds, it is a safe haven for the young people, offering respite from the traumas of the outside world. They are being given physical space, every school day for a whole year, to enter the castle as they please, explore at their leisure, develop friendships, make connections, and slowly work through their trauma. I did feel Kokora’s real life became a little repetitive (although I’m not likely to forget what “bento” is now!) and would have preferred more of a fantasy feel. I was always keen to go back through the mirror! However, the time allowed is always a threat hanging over everything. “All we’ll have left are these memories. We won’t be able to help each other.” and this lends a sense of urgency to the novel. There are also some dark themes underlying many of the stories, some tragedy, and we have a real sense of fear towards the bitter-sweet end. Throughout, we see how the seven youngsters form connections, resolve difficulties, learn to communicate with each other, and navigate the nuances and complexities of friendship. There are shy exchanges of gifts and unreciprocated confessions of love; there is a little jealousy and fights, just as in any teenage group, with no adults there to mediate or interfere. It is only outside the castle, beyond the mirror and in the real world, that we observe the difficulties these characters truly have, navigating not only their peers but also their parents, other adults, and the limitations and rules of the school system. There are small acts of rebellion, (view spoiler)[such as one dying his hair, or another dressing older and having a much older boyfriend (hide spoiler)]. And it is by going through the portal of the glowing mirror in the castle which enables them to have autonomy, and the freedom to develop friendship skills and live as they please, and confront their anxieties and fears in their own way. Lonely Castle in the Mirror is an absorbing story, which will appeal to lovers of magical realism. It is a clever way for the author Mizuki Tsujimura to explore important social and personal issues; themes of emotional wellbeing and friendship lie at the heart of the novel. We read seven very diverse accounts of isolation, through believable engaging characters. Yet within the fantasy framework, it is internally consistent, with problems which feel very real. The set-up poses several questions. We can pick up clues, which are carefully dropped so that we can piece together some of the jigsaw, but not the whole. I have not revealed any of these under the spoilers; those are there merely because many people do not like to know too much about the plot. The tension builds gradually, and we pick up various hints of what is to come. The ending is satisfying, and although I had worked out part of what was happening, at least two aspects of the ending were a complete surprise to me. I felt the pacing was good, and my keen interest in what would happen to each child, what the castle actually was, and the reason for its existence kept my attention focused. I liked this book very much, and will miss Kokoro, Fūka, Aki, Masamune, Ureshino, Rion, and Subaru, whom I feel I have got to know. The story has heart, sensitivity, and an original (and almost unguessable) ending which derives from what has gone before, rather than being deux et machina. Despite everything, the tone remains optimistic and hopeful. Lonely Castle in the Mirror (かがみの孤城) by Mizuki Tsujimura (辻村深月) was originally published in 2017, and became very popular. A manga adaptation was then serialised in 5 volumes between June 2019 to February 2022, and an anime film adaptation was released in Japan on December 23, 2022. It was translated into English by Philip Gabriela, who has also translated Haruki Murakami. “The Guardian” newpaper has called it “Strange and beautiful”. As I read the book, it did occur to me that it would transfer well to manga or film, but I have strong mental images of the characters now, and prefer to stay with them. “A hypothetical reality seemed preferable to present reality, and the more she fantasized about how great it would if certain things could come true, the more reality that world seemed to take on.” ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 13, 2023
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Oct 11, 2023
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Mar 01, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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B0DWV72VVH
| 3.36
| 6,658
| Oct 11, 2013
| Jul 02, 2020
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really liked it
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“Disaster Tourism”. What do these two words mean to you? Perhaps you have not put them together in your mind before. But disaster tourism is not a new “Disaster Tourism”. What do these two words mean to you? Perhaps you have not put them together in your mind before. But disaster tourism is not a new phenomenon. People have always been interested in gazing at post-disaster spaces, for a variety of motives, and the act of deliberately setting out to visit them is growing in popularity. Nowadays the tourism industry has packages in place for people to visit locations that have been subjected to either man-made or natural environmental disasters. It is considered a sub-sector of dark tourism, defined as: “the representation of inhuman acts, and how these are interpreted for visitors”. Examples might be visiting Auschwitz, the German Nazi concentration camp in Poland, or Phnom Penh, Cambodia to view the skulls found after the Khmer Rouge regime. Disaster tourism has a slightly different emphasis. It includes visiting Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which was the scene of an explosion in 1986—or Kathmandu after the 2015 earthquake—or New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in 2005. Unlike dark tourism, these disasters are not necessarily characterised by distress and atrocity, or sadness and pain. Perhaps you have been on such a tour, or even considered working in the industry. So this is the underlying theme of The Disaster Tourist a 2013 novel by the South Korean writer Yun Ko-eun. It begins in South Korea, but a lot of the action takes place in Vietnam on the island of Mui (possibly based on the real life Mũi Né). We focus on Yona Ko, who is a programme manager for Jungle: a Seoul company which specialises in curating holiday packages in disaster zones. She has worked there for 10 years and knows exactly why people choose to visit areas ravaged by tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. They will experience three progressive stages. First of all is shock, followed by sympathy and compassion, and maybe discomfort and gratitude for their own lives. Finally comes a sense of responsibility and the feeling that they had learned a lesson, (and maybe an inkling of superiority for having survived). That was the received theory, and what the company used to turn into a profitable concern, by “surveying disaster zones and moulding them into travel destinations”. Jungle prided itself on offering “thirty-three distinct categories [of crisis], including volcano eruptions, earthquakes, war, drought, typhoons, and tsunamis, with 152 available packages.” We may consider this to be a supremely cynical ethos, but Yona is good at her job, and diligent. She is “skilled at quantifying the unquantifiable”, looking at the frequency and strength of disasters, and the resulting damage to humans and property. She transforms this data into colourful graphs on her desk, irrespective of the human pain and loss represented, and any human consequences which give rise to inhuman algorithms. Yona takes great pride in her work, voyeuristic and exploitative though it may be. Yona never considers that aspect, and at 33 years old is solely focused on success in her career, putting all personal and ethical considerations aside. Pausing a little, this is an interesting modern phenomenon, but varies from country to country, and what is about to happen in this first chapter blows the differences between cultures wide open. There has been a spate of recent fiction considering the strange intersection of our work and leisure lives. The Japanese writer Sayaka Murata gave us “Convenience Store Woman”, and here we have a comparable novel by a Korean writer, Yun Ko-eun. Both are satires, fresh and sharp stories about life under late capitalism. For a long time English people (of whom I am one) have been wary of American companies, who (it is said), want your heart and soul when you sign up with them. There is a sense that your life is not your own, and your free time is always given at the company’s discretion, rather than as a contractual right. This more extreme form of capitalism is creeping into Britain too. But Japan seems to have pushed capitalism even further, as the only country with “collective capitalism”, which relies on cooperation, but ignores the fact that the means of production are private. This does provide benefits for workers, but it also places a high demand on them and their families. Long hours and high levels of discipline are commonplace, resulting in high levels of stress and even death by overwork: “karōshi”. So what of South Korea? Unless you live there, is is hard to appreciate the mindset, and in this first part of the book Yona seems almost like an automaton, having no emotional component. Perhaps this is a natural human defence mechanism; to not engage your feelings and thereby protect yourself. Not only is Yona subservient to the company, but she is also submissive to the males socially. (view spoiler)[When her supervisor, a slime-ball called Kim begins groping and harassing her, Yona tries to avoid him, but otherwise does nothing. Depending on where you live, the accepted social code for dealing with this varies. Tellingly, Yona is worried not “because her boss was sexually assaulting her [but because] Kim only targeted has-beens.” So Yona remains passive, even when others think of objecting. For Yona, her job is her life, but increasingly she finds herself marginalised at Jungle, and fears for her position in this cutthroat organisation. Kim offers her a way out. She is given an assignment: to pose as a tourist, going incognito on a Jungle tour whose future is on the cards. It is one of the tours being considered for cancellation, as it is in decline, and is to a desert island called Mui. Yona is to report back, and her findings will determine whether the company should still offer it. Yona is angry when she finds that the tour she has recently created is now assigned to someone else, but feels she has no choice but to accept this new job. If Yona decides the trip should be cancelled, then Mui is in trouble, but she hopes her job will be secure. (hide spoiler)]. This is a turning point for how we view Yona. We might either have felt pity for Yona's perceived impotence, or felt irritated at her apparent acceptance of a degrading position. We have been inclined to see her as just a cipher, an Everywoman in Korean society, but the writing now cleverly emphasises her more as an individual. The novel’s power dynamics have changed; not only for Yona, but the dynamic between Yona and the reader has also been tweaked. And this is a little disturbing. Yona had been (view spoiler)[abused (hide spoiler)] at Jungle, but now we wonder if perhaps we misinterpreted the reasons for her neutral reaction. Now Yona has power, and is not under threat, yet she still doesn’t seem to care about anything. If anything, Yona now seems consciously amoral. (view spoiler)[Mui’s attraction is its 1963 massacre, when the Kanu tribe attacked the Unda and a sinkhole opened to swallow the corpses with their decapitated heads. The writer buys “Unda skull-shaped decorations” from a street vendor, a small but telling example of how genocide has clinically been transformed into an opportunity for commercial transactions and profit. One evening, the tourists have to choose whether to stay overnight with an Unda or a Kanu family. The next morning, the vicious tribal massacre is reenacted for their entertainment. When standing at the site of this historic massacre, Yona maintains her business composure even to herself: “Standing in front of the volcano’s crater, the group took pictures, made wishes, and threw their flowers like they were bouquets. The bouquets drew an arc as they fell into the crater. To Yona, the whole action felt like neatly placing trash into its specific waste receptacle.” Yona does not feel even a flicker of shock or sadness. Working at Jungle has desensitised and hardened her, and she now fully accepts Jungle’s ethos that human life is a commodity. (hide spoiler)] This adds another dimension; and it is a very chilling one. There are four other Korean tourists: a mother and daughter, a recent college graduate, and a writer, as well as a local guide. These characters are vividly portrayed, and each has a disturbing side. The one who made my hair stand on end was the intensely obnoxious child, who appeared to be given no moral boundaries by which to make decisions. Most of the other tourists felt that she should not have been on the tour. All the visitors see everyday inequality, racism, and how poverty takes a high emotional toll. Local children hawk trinkets, (view spoiler)[ but we and Yona are witnesses to the off-stage lives of Mui’s impoverished citizens, who have all been recruited to act a role. Young boys with the most pitiable expressions are employed to cry for the tourists, but if their tears dry up, they are replaced. Later Yona happens to see a street musician whom she had seen during her tour, but the old man gives her an angry glance and says, “Please. We need time off, too.” She also sees the woman who acted as her host overnight and who attentively painted her nails. But now, no longer performing, the woman treats Yona coldly. We realise grimly that the whole set-up is an act. The most heart-wrenching stories conceal exploitation on a huge scale. (hide spoiler)] It is only a small step to a coldly logical horror scenario. As the story moves on, we see Yona’s gradual realisation of what is really going on, and how it is all too easy for her to accept this. Yona’s own complicity in the broader systems at work in Jungle’s interventions on local spaces begin to evolve with a dreadful remorselessness. (view spoiler)[ Some citizens are selected to be the victims in a “natural” catastrophe which would guarantee establishing Mui as a thriving tourist destination for years to come. Bodies are piling up, created through a variety of dubious ways such as deliberate traffic “accidents”, to be dumped in manmade sinkholes. But this catastrophe is designed by humans, and so carefully orchestrated that none of those destined to lose their lives in the tragedy get an idea of the whole. Ruthlessly, Jungle pays “compensation” into their bank accounts for their families, and with supreme callousness, lets each individual know how much it will be beforehand. It seems to be accepted practise for these impoverished people. (hide spoiler)] Each time we have accepted the hair-raisingly evil business practice, the emotional horror increases another notch. (view spoiler)[Yona discovers that the whole event is scripted in great detail: “The writer was currently fleshing out every possible fact about Mui’s future victims. He didn’t need to be very creative, considering how eagerly people read stories like this, but he did have to decide who would die. The writer’s notebook contained dozens of pre-determined casualties. A mother and son, an engaged couple, an elderly husband and wife who’d lived in harmony their entire lives, a family whose newborn baby was spared, a teacher who died saving her students, parents whose young child survived, an old dog that dashed into the chaos to save its owners.” It reads like a soap opera, which is of course what Jungle had hoped for. But there are still twists to come, both for Yona herself, who finds that as Crocodile 75 in the script, she is one of the destined victims and for the company, when a tsunami destroys the entire project, killing employees, citizens and tourists alike: “They had no rehearsals and no compensation, but their stories flowed to the ocean like blood from a head wound.” (hide spoiler)] In the end, Nature always wins. The Disaster Tourist is an easy read, in terms of the vocabulary and structure. A good Goodreads friend who lives in South Korea has described what academics scathingly call “Kim Jiyoung syndrome”. This claims that there is a tendency to simplify the language and style, in order to make literature accessible to everyone. If this applies to The Disaster Tourist, then it has been masterfully done. Its accessibility belies its devastating concerns. We read a gripping novel; a conspiracy page-turner akin to those of Michael Crichton. Ethical and ecological dilemmas are there on every page. This is the stuff of nightmares, where (view spoiler)[“mannikins” are real bodies, and “crocodiles” are predetermined victims. Nobody is fully complicit in the violence and destruction; the sacrifice for money, and the survival of a chosen few literally on the bones of others. (hide spoiler)]. Every single person is to some extent culpable, but also exploited. And yet it doesn’t quite reach 5 stars for me. The Disaster Tourist has been hyped as a book about the “me-too” movement. However the sexual harassment was not developed as a theme, but was essentially a mere plot device. Admittedly there was a big difference (view spoiler)[once we got to Mui. (hide spoiler)] From being a passive, accepting character mainly because of her gender, Yona then began to feel more in control, and as a consequence we began to feel more involved with the story. But then it is largely ignored, except for a long section (view spoiler)[ where Yona is is stranded on Mui, without her passport, phone, and only a few coins, with little hope of relief. (hide spoiler)] Even so I am not sure this is a specifically feminist issue, but more a human one! I was also unsure about the unnecessarily sentimental love story, which just seemed to be added in for no reason. (view spoiler)[How could Yona fall in love with an islander, when in every other context they were to her mere pawns or commodities? Is it to show her liberal tolerance, that she falls in love with someone from another class and culture? It seems trite, and has a hollow ring. (hide spoiler)] Finally there were some translation issues which irked me sometimes. One example is this: “These facts were as quotidian to Yona as the changing colours of a traffic light.” Really? Quotidian? That's not a word which is in my daily vocabulary. It sounds straight out of a pretentious literary novel—or more likely, a thesaurus. Yet Lizzie Buehler apparently won an award for this translation. Nevertheless The Disaster Tourist is a book well worth reading. The philosophical and ethical issues addressed are disturbing and complex ones. The indictment of tourism, with its industrial and often-imperial overtones, is carefully nuanced and focused to make the reader uncomfortable. We see the systems of global capital at large, and how they affect different people and places in different ways. We see how the sites of some people’s trauma become the consumables offered in trade for tourists seeking an “authentic experience”. And we also see as a necessary consequence, the side effect of moral righteousness. One tourist comments: “Isn’t this the reason we’re on this trip? […] To avoid repeating history?” and the others agree, repeatedly voicing justifications to themselves about bearing witness. Some even expiate their guilt by doing community service in the place they visit, such as digging a well (which ironically is never used). Cynically, the author tells us: “The travellers expose themselves to the islanders’ stories of trauma and grief in order to access a second-hand emotion.” We are forced to question the whole area of dark tourism. Yun Ko-eun show us the various motivations of the tourists, but invariably the tour is designed to fulfil the inner longings of the traveller, rather than to provide a true meeting of place and person. And we see the wanton destruction of the ecological system, and the ways that humanity’s trash on a huge scale, pollution, and capital all interrelate and increase, circling the globe. Our protagonist Yona has choices, which are cleverly exaggerated to form this relentlessly dark, near-future speculative satire. Yet the situations are common and believable. Capitalism often asks workers to sacrifice their ethics for their jobs, as we saw at the beginning. Tourism often exacerbates and profits from economic inequality, with tourists snapping shots of “quaint” people and customs. We watch the Korean consumers’ desires for “something exotic, the spirit of adventure”. Jungle is an exaggeratedly ghoulish enterprise, but as we have seen, its offerings are not that far from tourism packages which exist in the real world. Worst of all, observing tragedy from afar, as we all do when we watch the World News, often desensitises us; deadening our emotional impulses and processing our natural human reactions to accept disaster. We have seen it all before. Yona has a purely capitalist world view, without a moral dimension: she relates to everything to herself and sees others as commodities. By the end she learns that to Jungle, (view spoiler)[ her life is worth three hundred dollars. (hide spoiler)] With savage irony, it is too late for her to understand that Mui’s inhabitants’ lives are worth more than that, too. The Disaster Tourist is a biting critique of dark tourism, and our over-commodified society, as well as a satirical and suspenseful eco-thriller, getting the point across that climate change is inextricably bound up with the pressures of global capitalism. ...more |
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0559968140
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really liked it
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“Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!” is a saying which has passed into the English vernacular, and is often now used as a political slogan by pressure groups. It o
“Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!” is a saying which has passed into the English vernacular, and is often now used as a political slogan by pressure groups. It originated in the English translated title of a play from 1974, by the Italian playwright Dario Fo. His two plays Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and an earlier play from 1970, “Accidental Death of an Anarchist”, are Dario Fo’s best-known plays internationally. They were both written in response to specific political needs. Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is a Marxist political satire; focusing on the problems of economic crisis and job redundancies. Dario Fo turned this depressing scenario into a farcical comedy about the consumer backlash against high prices; a play so entertaining, despite its unlikely premise, that by 1990 it had been performed in 35 countries. Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is set in a “modest working class flat” in a working class suburb of Milan. The playwright details how in his play the political situation in 1974 translates into chaos in ordinary people's lives. It starts with the Italian prime minister Signor Rumor’s warning to the population that they will have to tighten their belts, because of the international money crisis. This results in a four hour general strike in protest at the government’s delay in dealing with inflation, unemployment and the energy crisis. By March the government has resigned, and a new government is formed without Republicans. However, there is continuing financial crisis, and now soaring inflation. The new government resigns after just 3 months. In the play, both the pace and the absurdity are cranked up a notch. By late summer, there is a spaghetti war. Stocks of pasta vanish from the supermarket shelves, as prices of pasta, milk and sugar double, and meat prices also escalate. This is followed by the ludicrous image of Italy being hit by soggy spaghetti. Inferior flour has been used to cut production costs. The situation is worsened when only a fraction (one eighth) of the wheat which has been granted to Italy by their EEC partners is distributed. The remainder lies rotting in Sicilian warehouses, and is eventually sold as animal feed, at inflated prices. This, then, is the preamble to the play’s fast and furious comedy. By the end of the year, the tension breaks after months of frustration. There is a spontaneous demonstration by a few housewives, as they decide to do something about it. They refuse to pay for their weekly shop. Some food is snatched, and for the rest, what is considered a fair sum is paid. They leaflet other women, calling on them to also take direct action against the inflationary supermarket prices, and pay the “just” sum rather than what is being charged. Margherita leads a revolt at her local supermarket, and looting guts the building. Along with her friend Antonia, the two women try desperately to hide their “liberated” goods before their husbands and the police catch up with them. Crazy disasters pile on top of each other as the two women try to cope with the results of their own actions - without telling their husbands what they have been up to. As the police come knocking, Margherita and Antonia cook up an outrageous plan to hide their pillaged groceries. Hysterical (phantom) pregnancies, saints, and curses are all invented to stop the police fingering the culprits who raided the store, with predictably hilarious consequences. Coffins and undertakers are both included in the plot, as devices to dispose of the spoils before their spouses find out what their women have done. And if you’ve ever wondered how to survive on a diet of dog food and bird seed, this play will show you. The play is clearly a political statement about the life and times of Italy in the 1970s. Dario Fo shows that the struggle to make ends meet, coupled with the loss of jobs, is the cost that working class carry in the fight against inflation. It is arguably also a feminist comedy, as it is written to show the viewpoint of the housewife, struggling to afford the ever rising prices in the shops. Its themes of unemployment, class division, and women’s role in society then continued to strike a relevant note through 1980s Britain. Continuing decades have also seen its relevance to their own problems, in various countries, with crooked politicians and bankers’ bonuses. Dario Fo was born in San Giano, a small town on Lago Maggiore in Lombardy. He spent his childhood moving from one town to another, as his father’s postings were changed at the whim of the railway authorities. In 1940 he moved to Milan to study at the “Brera Art Academy”. After the war, he studied architecture, then turned his attention to stage design and theatre decor, and began to improvise monologues and satirical sketches to entertain his friends. As a result, he quickly became involved in political cabaret shows. [image] From the very beginning, the provocative political content and topical nature of his comedy made his work controversial, and led to trouble with the authorities. In 1953 he wrote and directed a satirical play, but after its initial success, both the government and the church authorities censored his work. He later gave up architecture in disgust at the level of corruption he found. He continued to write and produce plays in which he spoke out against state corruption and political scandal, and also openly criticised the church. From 1958 he and his wife, the actress Franca Rame, have collaborated in productions for one of the three theatre companies they have founded in Italy. In 1997 Dario Fo received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The UK's first performance of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! was in London in 1978. It was a success and was revived for London’s West End in 1981 where it ran for 2 years. “Time Out” reported, “Fo’s ingenious farce careers through an escalating progression of improbabilities and confusions until it concludes with a thorough and well-timed solution." (I saw that performance towards the end of its run.) There have been various subsequent productions. Dario Fo continues to be one of the world's most frequently performed living playwrights. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian “Commedia dell'arte”, which came out of Venice in the 1600s. It was a popular form of street theatre, based on sketches or improvised scenarios, between stock characters. These were based on universal types of masters, servants and lovers. This theatrical style was very popular with ordinary working class people. I was alerted again to this play by a good Goodreads friend, herself Italian, and very familiar with the work of Dario Fo, an author local to her. She had been surprised to find Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! referred to in a novel she was reading, perhaps not having realised how widespread and admired Dario Fo's work is worldwide. In one of the ironic twists life sometimes throws up, in the course of revisiting the play, I came across a production by a theatre local to me now. When was it, I wondered? Staggeringly, it is a current production! This makes me wonder why this particular play was selected at this particular moment. Of course the UK has an ongoing struggle of its own, with drastic cutbacks, and in a curious echo of the Italian prime minister back in 1974, there has been a demand from the current prime minister of the UK to ordinary people to “make sacrifices” and “tighten our belts”. The best work of literature seem to convey a message which transcends the particular scenario of the play, novel or poem. They convey a universal observation or truth, one which can be tranposed to any individual's situation in any place, or a theory which can be applied across humanity. Dario Fo’s play appears initially to be about a microcosm; a specific culture in a small place, within a particular political system and within a specific economic climate at a particular point in time ... Yet it succeeds brilliantly at communicating much broader insights; ones which seem relevant to each new audience at the time they are watching. And it does it very entertainingly. This, to me, is the sign of a true classic. Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is a fast and furious comic spoof, but one with a double message. Dario Fo is giving a clear depiction of ordinary people's struggles within economic crises. However, another message also rings out loud and clear. When times are tough, sometimes it seems the only thing left to do is to laugh. ...more |
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1847801242
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it was amazing
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Stories from the Billabong is an oversize paperback, containing ten traditional Aboriginal tales. "These are some of the oldest stories in the world. T Stories from the Billabong is an oversize paperback, containing ten traditional Aboriginal tales. "These are some of the oldest stories in the world. Tens of thousands of years before Tutankhamen was buried in his *pyramid, these stories of the Dreamtime were being told beside the campfires and waterholes of the Aboriginal desert. They were told by word of mouth, because the Aboriginal people of Australia have no written language." The tales have been collected together and given to the Australian author James Vance Marshall to be retold. Perhaps James Vance Marshall's best known novel is "Walkabout", the story of two children lost in the Australian outback, from which the film was made. The author has retold these tales very charmingly, in a timeless way which captures both the traditional and the narrative feel. At the end of each tale is an informative short piece about the creature described, such as the reader may find in an encyclopaedia. Equally important in this project are the illustrations, interwoven into the text. They are by the Aboriginal artist, Francis Firebrace and lift this book above most picture books for children. Francis Firebrace comes from the Aboriginal tribe Yorta-Yorta, and has been both telling and illustrating stories of the Dreamtime for many years. In this book, his acrylic paintings use the four traditional Aboriginal colours of black, white, red and yellow. There are immensely attractive, patterned and stylised designs, with instantly recognisable motifs, appealing to adults and children alike. At the end of the book there is a helpful double-page spread, illustrating the symbols used, and their meanings. There is also a glossary of terms, and a short history of the Aboriginal people. The stories themselves are captivating, revealing a deep wisdom and strong moral code. I would recommend this book to anyone either unfamiliar with Aboriginal traditions, or with Australian flora and fauna. "As it was in the Dreamtime, so it is today - and perhaps will be for ever." Here is a complete list of the stories in the book: "The Rainbow Serpent and the Story of Creation" "How the Kangaroo got her Pouch" "Why Frogs can only Croak" "Why Brolgas Dance" "Why the Platypus is such a Special Creature" "The Mountain Rose" "The Two Moths and the Flowers of the Mountain" "How the Crocodile got its Scales" "The Lizard-Man and the Creation of Uluru" "The Butterflies and the Mystery of Death" *note: Tutankhamun was never in fact, buried in this way, but in a tomb. This is perhaps a perfect example of how the oral tradition can lead to fanciful imaginings. ...more |
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Oct 11, 2014
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Oct 11, 2014
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Oct 11, 2014
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0140437851
| 9780140437850
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0701123540
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| 1979
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liked it
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Wanting to read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, but lacking the courage to start such a devastating read, I purchased this book by the same author a
Wanting to read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, but lacking the courage to start such a devastating read, I purchased this book by the same author a few years ago. I thought it would “ease me in”. Campfire Tales of the American Indians (U.S title, “Teepee Tales of the American Indians”) was published in 1979, and includes stories that have survived through the oral tradition from more than two dozen Native American tribes. The book is divided into sections: 1. When Animals Lived as Equals with the People 2. Before the White Men Came 3. Allegories 4. First Contact with the Europeans 5. The Coming of the Horse 6. Tricksters and Magicians 7. Heroes and Heroines 8. Animal Stories 9. Ghost Stories There are between two and seven stories in each section. Only twice is a tribe represented more than once within a section. There is a list of sources at the end. It is an interesting way of grouping the stories, partly chronologically and partly by theme. It serves as a way of “dipping into” folk tales, although such an overview leads one to group different tribes together, and not recognise important distinctions. Perhaps this is a retrospective attitude; the book was after all written over forty years ago, and even the title might now be viewed as contentious. The illustrator Louis Mofsie has worked in pen and ink; stark black and white images with an occasional rough shading in grey crayon. A native indigenous American himself, at the time of publication he was an Art teacher, who directed a dance troupe in his leisure time. At the present time he is a dancer and choreographer. His father is Hopi, from Arizona, and his mother is Winnebago, from Nebraska, born in New York. It seems significant that I had to google this information, rather than finding his ethnicity included in the short blurb about him in the book. Here are links to retellings of some of the tales in this volume; one per section: 1. When Animals Lived as Equals with the People “The Rooster, the Mockingbird and the Maiden” Hopi LINK HERE 2. Before the White Men Came “Godasiyo, the Woman Chief” Seneca LINK HERE 3. Allegories “Return of Ice Man” Cherokee LINK HERE 4. First Contact with the Europeans “Katlian and the Iron People” Tlingit LINK HERE 5. The Coming of the Horse “How a Piegan Warrior Found the First Horses” Blackfoot LINK HERE 6. Tricksters and Magicians “How Rabbit Fooled Wolf” Creek LINK HERE 7. Heroes and Heroines “Red Shield and Running Wolf” Crow LINK HERE 8. Animal Stories “The Bluebird and the Coyote” Pima LINK HERE 9. Ghost Stories “The Sioux Who Wrestled With A Ghost” Sioux LINK HERE ...more |
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0140300988
| 9780140300987
| 0140300988
| 3.93
| 4,199
| 1918
| 1970
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really liked it
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Phillip Pullman says The Magic Pudding, Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff is his favourite book. He
Phillip Pullman says The Magic Pudding, Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff is his favourite book. He maintains that it is, "the funniest children's book ever written." And the "New York Review of Books" calls it, "Wild and woolly, funny and outrageously fun." It certainly is extremely silly and engaging, this Australian children's story, a classic from 1918. Written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay, it is partly a narrative, and partly in rhyming verse. Reading it feels like reading a cross between Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and A. A. Milne. "Alice in Wonderland" dates from 1865, and Edward Lear's "Nonsense Songs" from 1871, so it can be inferred that these works might have had an influence on the author. "Winnie the Pooh" however, dates from 1926, so clearly this work did not! It is very much akin to that type of literature, however. And as with those authors, although the story and characters appeal to very young children, it is a story which is better read aloud, as the language used is sometimes quite difficult. The story is about a group of friends, wild Australian anthropomorphised creatures. The two main characters are Bunyip Bluegum and his Uncle Wattleberry, both koalas, whose pomposity may make you laugh out loud. In fact Uncle Wattleberry performs a similar role to Owl, in the "Winnie the Pooh" stories, "'Apologies are totally inadequate,' shouted Uncle Wattleberry. 'Nothing short of felling you to the earth with an umbrella could possibly atone for the outrage. You are a danger to the whisker-growing public. You have knocked my hat off, pulled my whiskers, and tried to remove my nose.' There is Bill Barnacle the sailor, and Sam Sawnoff the penguin. Then there is Albert the cantankerous pudding of the title. He is magic, because no matter how often the pudding is eaten, he always becomes whole again - surely every child's dream of a pudding! "There's nothing this Puddin' enjoys more than offering slices of himself to strangers," says Bill Barnacle. These friends become the "Noble Society of Pudding Owners." On their travels they meet with several other animal characters. There's Henderson Hedgehog Horticulturalist, a "low larrikin" Kookaburra, a parrot who was a Swagman (or a Swagman who was a parrot), an elderly dog and market gardener Benjimin Brandysnap, and a bandicoot "naturally of a terrified disposition" carrying a melon. And every now and then the "Noble Society of Pudding Owners" are set upon by two dastardly puddin' thieves, the Wombat and the "snooting snouting scoundrel," the Possum. The story romps along with abandon, including sailors, firemen, and culminating in a court scene, in the sleepy town of Tooraloo. This is very reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts's Court in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." There is even a reference to cards, as the judge and the court usher are playing cards. It has a similar feeling of elaborate speechifying and pomposity, and a similarly chaotic dreamlike ending to the episode. Adults may well find themselves chortling along with the children, "The Mayor turned so pale at this that the Constable had to thrust a banana into his mouth to restore his courage. "Thank you," said the Mayor peevishly; "but, on the whole, I prefer to be restored with peeled bananas,"" "You're a carrot-nosed poltroon," said the Puddin' loudly, "As for the Mayor he's a sausage-shaped porous plaster." Everything is described with hilarity and extravagance. It is a children's fantasy without a witch or a goblin in sight. Norman Lindsay maintained that children were mainly interested in food and fighting, rather than fairies, and that is what he chose to write his story about. "Hearty eaters," as Sam Sawnoff says, "are always welcome." The story is full of charm and whimsy. Every page has line drawings, also by Norman Lindsay. The verses, so similar to Edward Lear, are little stories in themselves, reflect the varying moods of the characters. Most of all though, it is rumbustious, Australian to its core, and fun. Expect a great deal of exuberance and a dash of oddity especially in the versifying, because, "'The exigencies of rhyme,' said Bunyip Bluegum, 'may stand excused from a too strict insistence on verisimilitude, so that the general gaiety is thereby promoted.'" Here's a personal favourite, where Benjimin Brandysnap reads his defence to the jury - "the activity of the vegetables, as hereunder described - On Tuesday morn, as it happened by chance, The parsnips stormed in a rage, Because the young carrots were singing like parrots On top of the onions' cage. The radishes swarmed on the angry air Around with the bumble bees, While the brussels-sprouts were pulling the snouts Of all the young French peas. The artichokes bounded up and down On top of the pumpkins' heads And the cabbage was dancing the highland fling All over the onion beds. So I hadn't much time, as Your Honour perceives For watching the habits of puddin'-thieves." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 2014
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Jul 18, 2014
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Jul 18, 2014
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Paperback
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4.03
| 101,734
| 1940
| Aug 02, 2005
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None
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Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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May 23, 2014
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Paperback
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0755318854
| 9780755318858
| 0755318854
| 3.93
| 228
| Feb 19, 2009
| Mar 01, 2009
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really liked it
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Billy Connolly is a comedian and banjo-playing folk musician, an ex-welder from Partick, an area of Glasgow in Scotland. He is very proud of his Scott
Billy Connolly is a comedian and banjo-playing folk musician, an ex-welder from Partick, an area of Glasgow in Scotland. He is very proud of his Scottish roots although he now lives mostly in Miami, in the United States, and is world famous. Here he describes his journey around the virtually unknown coastal areas of the Arctic in his own inimitable fashion, with quirky humour, a zest for life, passion and wisdom. His enthusiasm is infectious, as he relates tales of eccentricity and wonder, conveying his idiosyncratic take on things. To travel right across the the Northernmost parts of the world, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, has never been possible before. But now, because of global warming, the ice melts for a few weeks in the summer, so ironically it is possible to experience this epic journey. The book is lavishly produced, with colour photographs on every page, many being the sort of holiday snaps a reader might take of themselves, of people they meet and places they see on their travels. More spectacular shots of the landscape use a full page of this large book. The text is set out in three ways: a linking narrative, interspersed with little speeches or strongly worded expositions by Billy Connolly, and boxes of textbook information. It works well. Sadly, the large print version has no illustrations whatsoever, not even the map at the front. The first section describes Nova Scotia, and the crossing over to Newfoundland. Billy Connolly starts at Halifax, the port where most of Canada's immigrant settlers landed. Although it was founded in 1749, most of the immigration occurred during World War II, when Canada provided sanctuary for thousands of evacuees fleeing persecution, from Germany, Holland, Italy or Russia. Shortly after the war there was an assisted passage scheme from Britain. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scot, was the first man to map Canada in 1879, and he also tried to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. He even called the longest river he found "Disappointment River", because it flowed North to the Arctic, and not to Alaska as he had hoped. So the Scottish connection in Canada is particularly strong. Billy Connolly was both surprised and enchanted to experience the "piping in" of the ship at Halifax, by what appeared to be 19th century Scottish highlanders. He is clearly moved when he visits a graveyard in Halifax, devoted to those who died on "The Titanic". It had been established there by the White Star Line, who owned the famous ship. Most of the relatives of those who died would never be able to visit the graves, of course. Billy Connolly then visits the Highland Games at New Brunswick. We can feel his confusion, as these Canadians seem to be more Scottish than the Scottish themselves; the traditions having been kept alive and fiercely guarded. Yet New Brunswick started off inhabited by the Mikmaq Indians, before being settled by the French and English with a large influx of Scots and Irish. He says, "Their descendants have kept that culture so intact that Scottish historians sometimes travel to Canada for advice on things that have been forgotten back home." But he makes it clear that there is a lot of kitsch as well, stalls selling knick-knacks. Crossing to Cape Breton he feels that they too have hung on to their Scottishness speaking Gaelic, and keeping various dance and music traditions. He describes the Acadians in Cheticamp, descendants of French colonists, many of whom eventually headed south to settle in Louisiana, and are now referred to there as "Cajun". The Cajun style of playing the fiddle is directly traceable back to the Cape Breton fiddlers. And he describes the exhilarating experience of riding his Harley-Davidson motorbike along the Cabot Trail. He felt very at home in Newfoundland describing it as "a fantastic place". The hospitality of one town, Gander, achieved world fame during the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11th September 2001, because so many aeroplanes were diverted there, and Gander was suddenly expected to cater for 6500 extra visitors. The inhabitants pulled out all the stops to help the people who had arrived on their doorstep. Billy Connolly called them, "awful nice folk. They find it very easy to communicate... which is a very Irish thing in fact. People just swan up to you and talk to you like they've known you all their life." But he didn't like the "theme park" "L'Anse aux Meadows", where fishermen have given up being fisherman, and now enact a Viking way of life for the tourists. As he points out, the Vikings were only there for a few years. Part two starts with an apt quotation from John Ruskin, "Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." This part of the book, about Baffin Island and the Inuit, is perhaps the most emotionally affecting part of the book. So far we have enjoyed Billy Connolly's antics and his sense of fun and eccentricity. Here we see a more sober side of him, as he views the change and loss of an entire culture. The name "Nunavut" ("our land") was coined as recently as 1999, when the Inuit were given autonomy over their territory on the southern coast of Baffin Island. The colonial history, as so often, was shameful. Representatives of the Canadian government could not pronounce the names of the inhabitants, so had renamed them with a Christian name and location number, giving them leather dog tags and insisting that these names and locations be used. Billy Connolly met a survivor from these times, who had been renamed "Adam E7-2256" in 1940. In 1969, an attempt was made to redress the situation replacing the names with Inuit names, but many could not adapt, and many of the kinships had been lost. Later on in the book, Billy Connolly learnt the trigger for the setting up of the Nunavut territory - in effect giving their own land back to the Inuit. Formerly Nunavut was snow-bound, but now the snow has melted, and for several weeks in the summer it is actually a dust bowl. As a consequence the Inuit way of life has changed irrevocably. For four or five thousand years, their lifestyle had been based on hunting. Now though, they have been thrust too quickly into the twenty-first century. They have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and a severe drink and drugs problem. Billy Connolly watched old film, in the Iqaluit museum, which showed earlier times, when Inuit people happily stood outside their igloos, wearing traditional sealskin clothes. He looked at the Inuit man next to him who appeared to be glued to the screen, wearing a baseball cap and a sweatshirt, and observed sadly, "I should imagine he gently weeps. His whole world has changed radically; from the way of the dogsled to the Internet, prefabs and fast food. Tookie seemed completely unsure what his role in the modern world might be... His face will always haunt me and seeing him there like that made a wee hole in my heart." There are mountains of rubbish all over the Nunavut area, dumps full of everything from half-frozen dead dogs to plastic waste and even vehicles, the Inuit having no procedure for coping with it. In their previous lifestyle "rubbish" was organic, and dropped anywhere, as it would go back to the land. Huskies are also a problem having overbred, and gone wild. Billy Connolly poignantly describes a simple scene, "I spotted a husky dog creeping around a rubbish dump and that summed it all up for me. That husky should have been barking and woofing, charging through the snow with a sealskin collar, not sniffing at the rubbish. He didn't even know he was a metaphor." He went on to Auyuittuq National Park, a beautiful Arctic wilderness, the name translating as "the land that never melts" although he observes wryly, "they'll have to change the name, it doesn't "perma" any more." He described the brilliant turquoise ice of the glaciers, and how he saw with his own eyes chunks of ice breaking off from icebegs and falling, and glaciers hanging over mountains as they retreated, "like a big drip of cream as if they're oozing into the valley." In nearby Pangnirtung he noticed, "Much of the town's social life revolves around fast food joints such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. At one end of the town kids were eating junk and doing wheelies, while at the other end the elders spotted a whale in the bay... Once again, though, I was saddened to see that their town, which is bang in the middle of all this sensational beauty, was a bit of a dump." Billy Connolly does not mince his words about the incoming whalers, who made a profitable industry before leaving, or the Canadian Government who took away the Inuit names and stole away the children to "educate" them. Igloolik, literally "there is an igloo here" is the geographical centre of Nunavut, and the territory's most traditional town. Billy Connolly found it remote, rural, neat and tidy, though an expensive place to live. Even though it had an old feel, one of the inhabitants he met who had been born in an igloo in 1936 now lived in a modern house with double glazing and cable television. This man told Billy Connolly how in Inuit mythology, white men were considered to be the result of a union between Inuit women and dogs. When the white explorers had arrived, they seemed to be so ugly and repulsive to them, that the Inuit thought they must be the children of these dog-like creatures, looking for their mothers. Here it was that he first encountered throat-singing, and tried to get to grips with the language of Inuktitut, which is still the first language in Igloonik, and from which we have words such as "kayak" and "anorak". But at his next stop in Pond Inlet, Billy Connolly was confronted with the difference in the two cultures. He is very proud of being a self-proclaimed "citizen of the world" and springs to the defence of the indigenous Inuit to live their traditional lifestyles, killing whales and seals for their food and skins. He joined in a seal hunt here, trying to quell his mixed feelings. But later, witnessing a group of narwhals from the shore, watching them in delight frolicking and playing, he was shocked to the core to hear a gunshot, as the Inuit hunted them. It came home to him with a jolt then, how very different his own perceptions really were. The third section of the book starts in the town of Resolute, Cornwallis Island, which is one of the coldest places on Earth, "ugly with its sheds and industrial plants and dumps everywhere;" This is where Billy Connolly learns of a disgraceful episode from recent history for which the Canadian government has now officially apologised, after an Enquiry called it, "one of the worst human rights violations in the history of Canada". In 1953 some Inuit were forcibly relocated from northern Quebec, purely to establish Canadian sovereignty during the Cold War. They were made promises of a good lifestyle, and the option to return, both of which were broken. The harsh land proved impossible for them to adapt their skills to, and huge numbers died, mostly very young. One grave in the town of Resolute was for a man born in 1964, who died in 1990 at just 26 years of age. He muses over this episode from history, and many more shameful aspects of colonial history, where the explorers who were credited with "discovering" places (notwithstanding the peoples who were already living there...) were usually the ones with the most money, and those who may have deserved credit were often overlooked. John Franklin's expedition is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. "The more I followed in the footsteps of Franklin, the angrier I felt at the propaganda I'd been fed about him all my life. I was always led to believe that he and the rest of those explorers were heroes when as far a I could see, they were a bunch of t******. The touting of upper-class idiots as heroes has happened throughout British history and I am tired of it... I think they are dithering, blithering idiots...prancing about the Arctic with a [candelabra and] silver dinner service, dressed as if he was going to dinner in Pall Mall. The big mistake these people made was that they took Britain along with them in their ships." Franklin had ignored his captain's advice and gone into Peel Sound the wrong way. Billy Connolly says with a mixture of sorrow and disgust, "It was here that they got stuck for two years, in mountainous ice that grew before their very eyes, making huge thundery noises. And it was here that they tried all their escapes, towing their lifeboats full of things they didn't need." Franklin's body was never found, despite thousands of pounds being sunk into funding further futile expeditions, and there is evidence of cannibalism, and possible lead poisoning. Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer known as the first to travel along the Northwest passage from Gjoa Haven, ("Uqsuqtuq" meaning "plenty of fat") got to know the Inuit, and learnt many survival skills from them. He said, "If you want to do these wonderful people a real favour, leave them alone to live the way they have always lived." Years later, Billy Connolly thinks he was right, observing, "This is beyond the magnetic North Pole, in a place where a couple of months a year you have no light, plus nine months of winter... These kids see everybody else in the world having a great laugh with rock and roll and boogie-woogie but they're stuck there... There are plenty of reasons for topping yourself." Amundsen claimed that the discovery of the Northwest Passage should be given not to Franklin but to Dr. John Rae, who came from the Orkney Islands, and is known as "the hero time forgot". He was second-in-command on one of the year-long expeditions to look for Franklin, and proved the existence of the Northwest passage, succeeding where Franklin had failed. Later, he mapped the area. He was discredited mainly because he was the first to convey the fact that cannibalism had been involved, and the British people, mainly led by Franklin's widow, would not believe that this could be the case with their stout moral navy officers. Even her friend, the great Charles Dickens would not believe it, saying that they were probably eaten by animals, and if not, "no man can show... that this sad remnant of Franklin's gallant band were not set up and slain by the Esquimaux themselves." Nobody listened to individual tales of the surviving sailors by the Inuit, who tried to help various individuals over a period of four years. These stories were ignored because they came from the mouths of "savages". John Rae continued to study indigenous tribes, for the rest of his long life, exploring Greenland and Iceland, exploring new territory, having areas named after him from the USA to Russia. Yet so far Britain has ignored him. The only way for Billy Connolly to traverse the Northwest Passage was over 8 days by cruise ship, which he referred to sardonically as "the floating old folks' home" musing over the fate of earlier explorers, and casting a jaundiced eye over his fellow passengers to consider who was the least stringy! He has never been what he calls "beige", despite being 65 himself by this time. When a polar bear was sighted in the distance he described the rush to the side of the ship, even though it was a mere speck on the horizon. Billy Connolly mused over the fact that he had been spending time with the Inuit, who described killing a polar bear single-handed with a knife, relishing the luxury of the meat. He felt emotionally more akin to the tourists, in their excitement, but loathed the "happy tripper" feel of it, the way people came from centrally heated homes to a warm comfortable berth on board a heated ship, returning home again feeling that they had seen the world. Mentally he was on the side of the Inuit, for their traditions and culture. Landing at Tuktoyaktuk (meaning "it looks like caribou"), or "Tuk", which was formerly called Port Brabant until 1950, Billy Connolly was surprised to learn that the chief pastime here in the Northwest Territories was a form of television bingo. He was fascinated by the "pingos", naturally occurring little hillocks made of ice, and covered with moss and small plants, and by the biggest walk-in fridge in the world. Many of the Inuit children who were sent away to have a Western "education" were forcibly taken from here. Some of them never returned home, and scandalously some suffered both physical and sexual abuse, for which the Canadian governments has formally apologised. "I still find it hard to get over the huge vastness of the Northern Territories," he says, travelling along the Dempster Highway, ending in Dawson City, Yukon, "a bit windblown and tumbleweedy." It is known as the epicentre of the Klondike gold rush in 1896, which is famously written about in verse by Robert Service, who as a result became known as the "Canadian Kipling". The writer Jack London also lived here, having gone there with his brother to pan for gold. Yukon is a huge area, twice the size of Britain, but only has a few thousand inhabitants, and in Tombstone Territorial Park, "jagged black granite peaks, alpine lakes and an explosion of colour in between. It took my breath away; it was amazing." In the final section of the book Billy Connolly is in more familiar territory, travelling down the West coast of Canada on his Harley Davidson. He remembered the descriptions of the Yukon from "White Fang," which he had read as a boy. In Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, he met up with Nancy Ball, "one of the great highlights of the trip", a tiny elderly woman who ran a great ranch all on her own. He heard tales of grizzly bears from those who lived alongside them, and saw bears in the wild for himself. In New Aiyansh he met a member of the Nisga'a, Alver Tait, sent away from his parents as a "victim of the disgraceful residential school system". Returning to his home Alver Tait immersed himself in his native culture. Billy Connolly stayed for some time with the Nisga'a, Canada's only self-governing Forest Nations tribe, being profoundly impressed by these people, who seemed so gentle, spiritual and unresentful despite all the maltreatment they had suffered at the hands of white Canadians. Despite the sorry history he chronicles, Billy Connolly has only praise for modern Canada and Canadians. He loves the country, "There is a size and beauty to everything in Canada that takes your breath away - mile upon mile of fjords and mountains and forests and rivers. The overpowering scale of the country came home to me when I realised that it had taken 10 weeks to cross... British Columbia, the flower of them all, with its cowboys and Indians, its bears and its eagles... Canada is in good shape. They've got some lovely folk there and I never met helpfulness or had a welcome like it anywhere in my life." These are a few personal highlights; any reader will discover different ones of their own. I could have described the carefully crafted scarecrows of world despots by the fiddle-playing Chester, the significance of the totem poles by the First Nations, felling a huge tree (diseased due to the infestation of mountain pine beetles) in Horsefly, British Columbia, or kissing a cod. If you have a yen for the "hairy, wild and weird" Big Yin, and a sense of curiosity, you will love this book. It is a delight to read, entertaining, funny, poignant and devastating in parts, moving and informative. What more could you want from a book of this type? ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 02, 2014
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Jun 04, 2014
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May 15, 2014
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Hardcover
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Bionic Jean
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