| |
|
| |
|
|
by Matthew Kneale
In a word (or two or three): ahoy maytes!
From Mr. Hipster:
I tend to buy my books in clusters.
I'll get super-motivated, cozy up with Amazon and just go to town
on those recommendations, wish lists and whatever else I can get
my hands on. I'll Google other lists around the Internet and read
synopses and reviews to get a sense of the book, and sometimes
on sheer impulse buy a twelve dollar item that will surround my
life for up to three weeks (depending on page length, tiredness
factor, the Lincoln Tunnel, etc.). I may not get around to the
last tome in my bulk purchase until six months after reading up
on it and plunking down the credit card. Admittedly I had no recollection
of what English Passengers was about when I plucked it
off my shelf a few weeks ago. And reading the back cover, I had
no f'ing idea why I had bought the thing. I actually turned to
page one with some dread. Ships confuse me. Ships of any size
just confound my sense of space and time. That's one of the reasons
I disliked Life
of Pi so much; I couldn't keep the starboard and aft and port
thing straight--and that was just a little dinghy. And while the
description of the one ship in this book did confuse me a bit
with its fo'c'sle and hull, the author didn't get all technical
and obsessive with his nautical terms. Instead the ship was just
another character in this ensemble piece of semi-historical fiction.
I’ve professed my ignorance of history on more than several
occasions, but I most certainly couldn't be expected to know about
the history of Tasmania (formerly called Van Diemen's Land). This
is a brutal history that I'm sure the English, given the chance,
would surely like to erase from the books. The brutality that
the English inflicted upon the native, Aborigine population of
that country is stunning. The treatment it gave its own citizens,
who were sent there as criminals, was almost as bad. This history
is surrounded by a few stories which all end up ultimately tying
together. There's the ship's captain and his crew from the Isle
of Man just trying to make some extra money smuggling booze and
tobacco to the heavily taxed citizens of other shores. Then there
is the vicar and his expedition to Tasmania to find what he believes
is the Garden of Eden. Thrown into the mix is the story of one
aborigine trying to survive against the odds under British imperialism.
There are a bunch of other characters who get a chapter or two
here and there, enriching the story, all in their first-person
accounts. These include, but are not even close to limited to,
a governor, a governor's wife, a prison superintendent, a convict
and every manner of British civil servant. The author, while illustrating
the absolute decimation of the native population through murder,
disease and internment, manages to also convey the absurdity of
the whole thing--not keeping it "light" per se, but
certainly not making this as much of a horror show as it could
be. It's just a fascinating look into the lengths men will go
to justify their actions. Despite what sounds like pretty dry
subject matter, the book and its non-linear, but date-driven diary-entry-from-lots-of-points-of-view
narrative structure keeps things humming along. The nice part
is if you're getting sick of the aborigine guy talking about how
he's going to stick it to the white man, you know in only a few
pages that the psychotic doctor, who thinks that he can classify
all human behavior and actions based upon racial and ancestral
background (Hitler, anyone?), will be up. And if you're into Manx
sea captains or egotistical vicars, then this book has it all
for you. Sometimes funny, and always just a little bit shocking
(the author based a lot of the characters and events on real people
from history), the thing turned out to be a surprise hit after
my initial hesitance.
|
|
| |
|
| |
| |
|
|
Home
| Booze & Grub | Movies
| Music | Books
| Diary
| Randomness
|
|
| |
|
