An elegant, well-written pleasure even for readers with no particular interest in foot racing.
Guardian editor and amateur runner Finn marks his second embedded experience with distance racers.
In the first, Running with the Kenyans (2012), the author trained in a country renowned for running skills in every known competitive event. But Japan, it turns out, is even more smitten with running; as he writes, if every major race seems to be “won by a seemingly endless succession of superfast Kenyans and Ethiopians,” the Japanese are “at least putting up a fight.” Unlike everywhere else on the planet, it seems, Japanese towns and companies offer runners team positions and salaries, allowing them to cultivate the skills of ekiden full-time. Finn, nearing 40 as he writes, takes a George Plimpton–esque tack and runs alongside them, though he finds that the world of Japanese running is insular in the extreme and the willingness of coaches and runners to bare their souls to him pretty well nonexistent. Finn explores the place of running in Japanese culture, taking sidelong looks at some of its expressions—one is literary, found in the work of Haruki Murakami, a running fanatic. It’s a wonderful adventure, and it’s not far-fetched at all to liken it to one of Plimpton’s escapades, even if Finn seems to be a better runner than Plimpton was a football player. More than being a deep look into a sport—though it is surely that—the book is a lively travelogue and a depiction of a culture that does not give up its secrets easily. “For Hatsuyume,” he writes of a certain holiday, “it is considered a good omen to dream of Mount Fuji, along with an eagle and an aubergine. I’m not sure where those last two come in, but right here, in its full glory, across the lake, is Mount Fuji….It brings a dreamlike quality to the finish of the race. It’s no wonder people are crying.”
An elegant, well-written pleasure even for readers with no particular interest in foot racing.Pub Date: June 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-121-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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