The genre of nature writing often combines memoir with nature observations, which can bring out the best in an author. There are however times when this very mixing is what fails the book, and Penguin Year by Lindsay McCrae sadly falls into that category. This book is the memoir of a camera-man getting the amazing opportunity to film emperor penguins for 11 months, in Antarctica – everything is taken care of; food, living situation, equipment, the whole package; as long as he accepts the offer. Coming at perhaps the worst possible timing as he finds out his wife, Becky, is pregnant with their first child and their time living together is still freshly begun. In the end, he takes the leap – a very understanding Becky gives the okay for this adventure of his, leaving her behind in the last few months of pregnancy and the first months of their son’s life. McCrae spends some time worrying about what he is leaving behind but quickly realises it is the opportunity of a lifetime, a dream come true. Soon he is off to chase that dream – a cold, long, at times isolated, challenging, stunning and distant dream. The book chronicles that year in the making of a documentary – the episode on emperor penguins in “Dynasties” – filming, living in Antarctica, his day-to-day mixed with his observations of the life that can prosper at the bottom of the earth.
The main problem comes down to the author himself. He whines from the first few pages down to the last, about anything and everything: what he is missing back home, that Becky is having a nice time in a warmer climate, missing birds and biking, boring food, nothing to film, panic at nothing to film, can’t the penguins just get down to business – who cares if it’s too cold for them to be out and about, if I can’t see them I can’t bloody do my filming job. There’s a stronger focus on his work and everything surrounding the filming than the penguins themselves, the latter being the better part of the book. The observations of the penguins are often clear-eyed and close-up, which is of course lovely as the animal is one not many of us can ever see in such a location. It’s fascinating to read about what the landscape of an emperor penguin actually looks like, throughout a year and the seasons; what stages make up its life, what challenges comes with each such passage, and how they prosper is such challenging living circumstances. One of the downsides to a book like this with a strong personal perspective is that the very eyes you are seeing the story through contaminates what you are seeing. As we’re standing beside a camera-man, we look at the penguins as the star of a show – and if nothing much happens, or too much of the same, his irritation shines through the shot. In the text there’s at times a distinct lack of understanding and genuine interest for the penguin’s well-being. There’s only one memorable instance where this is clearly not the case, as he helps the penguins in a rough turn and it’s one of the best parts of the book; where there’s true feeling for another’s life separate from ones own agenda.
There’s another aspect to the writing that cuts down its potential, it is the lack of skill this writer has in the craft itself. Rather than thrilling, transporting and nerve-tingling – as it could easily be with this premise – it is ineffectual in the conveyance of experience and emotion. In an attempt at getting across the strength of his feelings, he repeats himself over and over, arguing in a circle – rather than conveying that strength of emotion through sharp and well-selected words. There’s lack of power to his prose, missing the point of adventure and high-stakes, making for tedious reading. Looking at his documentary I can see from a second his talent in filmmaking but unfortunately this does not translate into the book.
When the days are coming to an end and he is getting ready to leave, hindsight seems to make him more appreciative of everything he has been able to observe first-hand and the unique experience he has been given – which also made the book end on a fairly positive note. Overall, I felt disappointed by what could have been a moving and vibrant book on life of any form living at the furthest south-point of the earth; I have yet to watch the full episode that was the harvest of this year-long experience and hope to see more compassion and insight through this lens than came through Penguin Year.
Thanks to the publisher who kindly gave me a digital review copy of this book!
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Title: Penguin Year – Life Among the Emperors
Author: Lindsay McCrae
Publisher: William Morrow
Publishing Year: 2019 (November 12)
Genre: nonfiction, memoir
In Vanishing Fleece Clara Parkes takes us through a journey of wool. She sets out, as she puts it, to get her “Masters” in wool making – from the animal to the human use of this fiber, how is it being made? And who are the people involved in making that happen? The book covers the stages from shearing the sheep, to cleaning and combing the wool, to the handling of that wool into a useful material – either as textile and the like, going in one direction, or as yarn – with several following steps before it lands into the customers (knitters) hands. Not only is this book doing something unprecedented, lifting the curtain of a fairly cloaked industry and history, but it tells the very human and engaging stories of a long history of a craft and of skilful work that is almost dying out in the country – in these changing times of globalisation and the older generation on the brink of retirement having no new generations to take their place to keep the companies going. In part it’s a sad story, of everything that has already been lost – all of the companies that went bankrupt, whose role in a community no longer had purpose or hands to get the job done, to family legacies lost in the fog of the past. But it is also in part, a story of hope – of so many actors within the field who have managed to stay afloat despite the shifting soil underneath their feet, who have adapted to fit better with the new century and who are even growing in demand in recent years with interests for sustainable and high quality materials from the consumers point of view growing. But what this book mainly means, to me as a knitter, is an invaluable overview of the journey from the animal to what I hold in my hands – what I’ve taken for granted in the years I’ve been knitting and all of the work that goes into creating that unassuming bundle. A better understanding and awareness of the process – both in the human, animal, and industry level of involvement – also means that as a consumer of these products, knitters and non-knitters alike, we can make more informed choices about who and how we support people in this industry, to make our money and our support stand with those whose work we want to help staying strong, to make it count.
In I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi tells her life-story of growing up with an increasingly splintered mind, from the early days of living in Nigeria and being confused at the turmoil within to the growing fear in losing control and being hospitalised for ‘severe depression and suicidality’. While the book is described as an essay collection, it’s more suitably put as a memoir of a woman trying to piece together the various strands of her story and making sense of it, for others perhaps but more likely for herself. The structure of the book takes a non-linear chaotic direction in a fragmentary style, much like its author describes her own memory as being moment and emotion and moment rather than a clear chronology. She questions her own memories and the details within them, wondering if they’re true or part of the useful narrative she and others have made to make the pieces fall into a logical order. But in reality, there is no such clarity or structure to the lived experience – the further Ikpi moves through life and takes us along the ride, the more she comes face to face with the lack of order she is in fact experiencing. Sometimes things are good, sometimes they’re not – sometimes everything is good, sometimes everything is bad. The extremes of the bipolar II disorder she is later in life diagnosed with, sends her to the highest highs and the lowest lows without any apparent patterns to predict future turns. It’s enough work trying to stay in the boat, rather than attempting navigation of the waves. But she does and through the haze, which she describes her depression as, she tells a truth that pounds at you, scratches and screams and pounds at you. It’s undeniably real and illogical and chaotic and violent and tough, and sad and sometimes there’s a light but then there’s darkness and it’s hard, and it’s pointless, and it’s good, and it’s impossible – on and on, through every turn you’re tumbled along with Ikpi’s narrative, blindly running along searching for the end of it all. The way this book is written and structured, to force you to go along with the way her mind makes sense of the puzzle pieces it is given, it allows you to get a glimpse into her particular experience of growing up and living with mental illness. For that purpose alone, this book is worth its weight in gold.
In Waterfalls of Stars Rosanne Alexander shares the life-changing story of living on the island of Skomer for an entire decade. She recounts, as if there in mind and spirit, the journey to the island for the first time and becoming acquainted with it as someone with no previous familiarity with the place or true understanding of what it would mean to live in a place so isolated as to be barely reachable for several months of the year. While studying at college she meets her then boyfriend, Mike, who she has a relationship with for the duration of their studies. When he finds out about the advertisement for a warden-job at Skomer, his life’s dream, he persuades Rosanne to go with him as the job requires a couple to apply. They are ultimately accepted and get married in the spur of things (another requirement), hastily leaving everything behind to take on this new life and adventure ahead. Living on Skomer means their only connection with the rest of the world is a boat to travel from the island to the mainland, which can only travel with decent weather conditions. Their job itself entails taking care of and monitoring the natural life of the island, but also ends up busy with various tasks demanded by the harsh weather and rough reality of Skomer. They’re not well paid nor do they have access to food very easily and there was no electricity in the house then (which has changed by this point, but not so during the 1980s that Alexander lived on Skomer), so there’s many challenges in living in such a place – particularly when something goes wrong, like food supplies running out or Mike getting caught in a storm. In many ways then, this book is the testament of living in direct connection with nature in all of its faucets; often harsh and dangerous, at other times absolutely magical.
In A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings Helen Jukes chronicles one year during which she decides to take up beekeeping, and takes us along for the ride. Interspersed with lessons about beekeeping and the nature of the honeybee, are observations on Jukes’s own life and how the two parts so often seem to feed off of each other. The more she learns about the hive and the bees, the more she understands about herself too and what she had been missing from her life. A job that brings nothing but exhaustion and frustration, wanting to be more resilient to the stress of it but not being able to untangle the intensifying knots in the neck or in the heart; she takes up beekeeping as something to pour her heart into. ‘The idea arrives’, she tells us, on a day like all others, but she is attracted by the possibility of it. Researching about hive constructions and historical beekeeping, she eventually decides to take the leap which leads her onto exciting new paths and meeting new people, as well as many discoveries of the world along the way.
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters is a bit of an odd book. Reading the synopsis, you’re informed that there will be a crime within the pages of this book. However, the first half of it (300 pages) does not include that crime and so while you have the knowledge of this terrible thing that is going to happen right from the start, by the time it happens it comes truly out of the blue. It feels jarring, what was the story I was reading up until now? A love story, between two women, a lot of it quite sensual and electric but also romantic, plagued, struggling, tender, hurried. It’s a bit of a messy affair but it fits with the story of these two women meeting – one, the daughter of the woman who owns the house that the other woman lodges in together with her husband.
I’ve been on a historical fiction kick lately with titles like I was Anastasia and The Trouble with Goats and Sheep so it was only right I got to one of the masters of the genre, Tracy Chevalier. Remarkable Creatures tells the story of Mary Anning, famed fossil hunter, in a fictionalized account of her life. The book follow her coming into her own, figuring out what she’s good at and becoming famous for her findings; falling in and out of love, making friends with a woman of higher class, Elizabeth, whose brother sent off her and her sisters to Lyme when he got married to make place for his own family. This book is of the quiet, ruminating sort – looking less at one specific life-changing event – although there’s a bit of that too – but it’s more a part of a life in flux; in the midst of transformation. Mary Anning, having grown up in a worker’s family and having to collect ‘curies’ that the family could sell to make a living and feed the household is an unglamorous heroine. While the setting, early 1800s, reminds me of Jane Austen and the expansive fields and flowing muslin dresses of her books; there’s little of the romanticism of Austen’s works in the story of Anning or her friend, Elizabeth. Instead this book follows characters who are constrained by their circumstances but manage to make the most of it and push beyond them, despite having everything speaking against them. Two women exploring the male-dominated field of science, they’re not exactly welcome among the upper class learned men who believe women cannot possibly understand such complicated things as God’s creatures or their anatomies for that matter. Mary and Elizabeth challenge these assumptions by being passionate and hard-working, curious and questioning of everything they encounter.