In reflective prose, Hardy fully fleshes out the denizens of this remote and troubled corner of the world.
Novelist and Financial Times writer Hardy (The Wonder House, 2006, etc.) gently probes changes within family and village life in the Kashmir Valley two decades after insurgency strife.
The author vacationed among the lakes of the idyllic Valley since her youth, returning often with her mother to live on a houseboat until the insurgency for Kashmir independence disrupted the region. From late 1989, as the Islamic militants terrorized villages, threatened the local Hindus, kidnapped male youths to be sent to training camps on the Pakistan border and forced women to cover up, life in the valley, formerly “a place of picnics and flirtation,” became fraught and dangerous. In 1997, Hardy met and stayed with the Dars, an extended family of Muslim houseboat owners and carpet sellers who became itinerant salesmen once the tourist business collapsed. From listening patiently to the stories of Mohammad Dar and his three brothers, their father, wives and friends, Hardy fashions a richly textured narrative of this traumatized culture. Mohammad sent his sons to a Tablighi Jamaat school in the United Kingdom to complete their education, which was interrupted by war, and also to remove them from the lure of becoming “martyrs” for the separatist cause, which essentially emptied villages of young men, leaving grieving families and hospitals full of shell-shocked victims. Hardy interviewed former militants who fled the training camps because of abuse and inhuman conditions, and returned without hope. Meanwhile the women remain shut up behind walls in a highly patriarchal society, without access to education or notions of a wider world. The author peers deeply into this chaotic region and the needs and desires of the people who seek a fuller life.
In reflective prose, Hardy fully fleshes out the denizens of this remote and troubled corner of the world.Pub Date: June 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4391-0289-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
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
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
