Wood delivers a bold travelogue, illuminating great swathes of modern Africa, but as literature, it leaves something to be...
Walking the Nile has enticed many explorers, but Wood provides an up-to-the-minute portrait of the nations and people that claim the world’s longest river.
From the moment the author began his journey, at the alleged source of the Nile, he encountered constant conflict and hardship. His guides mistrusted each other. So-called pygmies were reluctant to accept him. He had to fight through every border crossing, and he faced the constant threats of theft, disease, and corruption. Wood is a war veteran, and he was able to improvise his way through dangerous situations, such as firefights in a Sudanese city and an interrogation by secret police. But the trek was not without tragedy: when the author agreed to walk with American journalist Matt Power for a week, Power eventually collapsed and died of heat stroke. “I wanted the cold comfort of English skies again,” writes Wood. “I wanted to be anywhere but here, thinking of the man who had died so that he could write about me on my indulgent, pointless, selfish trek.” Overall, Wood is a sharp observer and authoritative writer. He takes pains to describe the Rwandan conflict, the Egyptian revolution, the Sudanese civil war, and all the culture clashes in between. But chutzpah and empathy only get him so far. In the end, the author is unable to adequately explain his interest in the Nile, and the book does feel indulgent at times. The story is awkwardly similar to Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between, while lacking the immediacy of the Afghan context. Unlike Stewart, Wood accumulated media coverage as he went. By the time he reached the Aswan Dam, he was carrying an article chronicling his passage. This kind of publicity recalls the newspaper frenzy of the Stanley-Livingstone expedition. For adventurers like Wood and Stanley, the Nile is a metaphor as much as a place.
Wood delivers a bold travelogue, illuminating great swathes of modern Africa, but as literature, it leaves something to be desired.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2449-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
A searing memoir of family ties that bind all too cruelly.
An impoverished girl in Portugal endures a hellish childhood in this moving autobiography.
Talk about being born under a cloud–the author was conceived when her mother Angelina, a housemaid in a tiny Portuguese village, was raped by an employer. Her prospects ruined, Angelina abandons Maria to her parents’ care. On her rare visits, she can barely bring herself to acknowledge her daughter’s existence. Maria’s first eight years with her doting grandparents seem idyllic, but when her grandmother dies she goes to live with Angelina and her new family. There Angelina’s resentment at the daughter who embodies her trauma and shame flares into outright hatred. Maria is ignored or treated like a slave, beaten for the slightest mistake, poked and scalded and fed rotten leftovers while Angelina and her common-law husband and their children feast on fresh food. Her terror and loneliness are heartbreaking, but she never loses her spirit. Through all the abuse she vows to get an education and find a way out of her miserable straits. The drama subsides a bit after Maria, seizing every break she can get, emigrates to Canada. She drifts through jobs and relationships and finally settles into a contented marriage, but her longing to discover her father and come to terms with her mother persists. Trautman’s lightly fictionalized account of her youth is vivid and gripping. Her enchanting portrait of life in her grandparents’ village sets up a shocking contrast with the grim and gritty confines of her mother’s Lisbon apartment. Angelina is a memorable character–at times she’s almost a fairy-tale ogress, but readers feel the sense of humiliation and dispossession that fuels her rage at her flesh and blood. The author’s luminous prose tells this story with immediacy and pathos.
A searing memoir of family ties that bind all too cruelly.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4415-6787-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wise and entertaining, this book is hard to put down.
A deft, compelling autobiography of an Everyman.
Thorough, organized and well-researched, Circuits & Bumps qualifies more as autobiography than memoir, heavily weighted though it is toward Condon’s early years. Though his childhood was at times Dickensian–spent in part in an orphanage when his father was incarcerated and his mother hospitalized–the author, an admitted romantic, remembers himself more as Huck Finn than Pip. Blessed with an encyclopedic memory, Condon displays a keen eye for those seminal moments that most require years of expensive therapy to pinpoint. His are receiving his library card, seeing his first mountain and suffering a terrifying run-in with a threatening stranger–all have effects that took decades to reveal themselves fully. Though the author entered training for the Royal Air Force during World War II, fighting ended before he got airborne. Failing to earn his wings, Condon found himself adrift in the gloom of postwar London. Lured by the contrast of Canada’s unfettered and pristine expanses, Condon emigrated. There, he transforms into a virtual Sal Paradise and his narrative into a somewhat less manic, but no less idealistic, Anglo-Canadian On the Road. A stint at a mining camp in the Yukon led the young man to turn his attention to education, a decision that led to his matriculating at the age of 27 at the University of British Columbia. By his early 30s, Condon married his one true love, lost her to breast cancer, become a teacher and begun suffering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The author wields some advantage over a contemporary audience due to the sheer exoticism of growing up in 1930s London. However, his magnetic tale is powered as much by the storytelling and language as by the subject matter. There’s comfort in the grace with which he writes about his struggles. A writer with an enviable talent for consistently skilled word choice, Condon crafts a remarkable story out of what, at objective consideration, is a relatively unremarkable life.
Wise and entertaining, this book is hard to put down.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4120-9930-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
