The Reader's Shelf: Epic Journeys: Adventures in Reading, May 1, 2011
May 1, 2011The most interesting travel stories are usually not about the destination but about the journey and therefore can be either real or imagined. As all travelers know, be they those who walk out the door or those who pick up a book, even the most exotic voyages, and especially the arduous ones, can channel universal experiences. Many lessons are learned from the mix of isolation and connection brought by travel including endurance, resilience, kinship, generosity, and reciprocity. Whether the journey takes us to the far reaches of Arctic Greenland or to the lushly appointed rooms of our imagination, all adventures invoke simple human truths that become crucial discoveries.
Gretel Ehrlich’s lyrical This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland (Vintage: Random. 2003. ISBN 9780679758525. pap. $18.95) recalls her forays into the Arctic. Lured by the silence and the darkness of this almost untouched place, the author spent seven chilling seasons discovering Greenland’s vast landscape and hardy people, the Inuit. She captures their determination and humor and recounts their beliefs in the gods and goddesses of the elements, their attachment to the animals they depend on, and their stories of humans and animals crossing boundaries of death and language. Her months-long hunting trips by dogsled reveal her love of the outdoors and sometimes challenge her innermost emotions.
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Spiegel & Grau. 2008. ISBN 9780385521734. pap. $14.95) is the story of another transformative journey, this time fictional but nonetheless real for Toltz’s many charmed readers. Jasper Dean’s quest for self-identity takes him from the Australian outback to Parisian cafés, from the jungles of Thailand to mental institutions to the criminal underground. Raised by a wildly inventive father absorbed in a losing battle to create a lasting impression on the world, Jasper, who once thought himself a casualty of his father’s whims, comes to realize his childhood was also one of unparalleled grand adventure.
Amitav Ghosh explores the 19th-century Opium Wars of the Far East in the Booker Prize–nominatedSea of Poppies(Picador. 2009. ISBN 9780312428594. pap. $15), the first volume in an expected trilogy. Hardened sailors, hopeless stowaways, and a mishmash of convicts, all of varied races, make up the crew of the Ibis, an immense ship sailing across the Indian Ocean to fight in the Opium Wars. Fate and circumstance form connections and elicit new loyalties and enemies among the travelers in this sprawling story as the ship embarks on a journey of solidarity that will span oceans and generations.
Survival itself comes into question in Ivan Doig’s adventure novel, The Sea Runners (Mariner: Houghton Harcourt. 2006. ISBN 9780156031028. pap. $13). Drawing on an actual event, Doig tells the story of four Scandinavian indentured servants who in 1853 steal a canoe from their Russian work camp. They leave the shores of New Archangel (now Sitka, AK) and launch themselves toward Oregon powered only by the current and their own rowing. The sea runners must endure harrowing storms in their tiny craft as well as the near constant threat of starvation and drowning. The four must also endure one another, as guided by sheer force of will, they paddle the 1200 miles to freedom.
A relatively unknown, but amazing, survival story is that of Isabel Gramesón’s South American trek in 1769. Until that time, no woman had ever traveled across the Andes and down the uncharted Amazon wilderness. Journalist Robert Whitaker draws on the original records of French mapmakers and Peruvian witness accounts in The Mapmaker’s Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder and Survival in the Amazon (Delta: Dell. 2004. ISBN 9780385337205. pap. $13), a chronicle of Gramesón’s 3000-mile expedition to reunite with her husband, cartographer Jean Godin, whom she had not seen in 20 years. Her odyssey would be remarkable regardless of its outcome, but when one considers that Gramesón survived alone in the rainforest for weeks without supplies and outlived most of her more skilled guides, her tale is astonishing.
Rory Stewart’s journey is equally amazing. Beginning in January 2002, he walked across war-ravaged Afghanistan, recounted in Places In Between (Mariner: Houghton Harcourt. 2006. ISBN 9780156031561. pap. $14.95). Many other journalists have died from the hazards he encountered while crossing mountains covered in nine feet of snow and searching for a place to stay in Taliban-devastated towns, but Stewart was lucky every time he was welcomed into a villager’s home. Through his encounters with village patriarchs, NGO workers, and Taliban officials and the beautifully restrained descriptions of the landscape he trod, Stewart reveals a country still largely unknown to most readers.
This column was contributed by Breean Kay. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two children and is a 2011 MLIS applicant at the University of Washington
| Author Information |
| Neal Wyatt compiles LJ’s online feature Wyatt’s World and is the author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA Editions, 2007). She is a collection development and readers’ advisory librarian from Virginia. Those interested in contributing to The Reader’s Shelf should contact her directly at Readers_Shelf@comcast.net |
