Tag: travel writing

Finish a book challenge #2 – “Venice: the lion, the city and the water” by Cees Nooteboom

Venice has to be one of the most enigmatic, captivating cities in Europe, and possibly one of the most painted and written about. For a small place it seems always to have punched above its weight. The entire metropolitan area of Venice (which is spread over more than a hundred islands) is around a quarter of the size of Greater London, with a fraction of the population. The central area of the city, to which most of its 30 million visitors a year will be drawn, is even smaller. It is considered to be a victim of over-tourism and has for many decades been “sinking” into the lagoon that surrounds it.

I have twice in my life been one of those tourists. The first time was in 1986 when as an 18 year old I “inter-railed” around Europe. It was July and it was jam-packed. The youth hostel was full and so I was sent to a convent on one of the other islands which took in female travellers in the summer months. It was so clean and peaceful, a world away from the crowds of Piazza San Marco. The second time was in August 2012, when my children were young. We were on a family holiday in Italy and went to Venice for the day (as ninety per cent of tourists do). I’m afraid we went on a gondola and bought glass souvenirs. Again, it was jam-packed and I came away feeling somewhat tarnished. 

But Venice has always had something of a resonance for me. I studied German at ‘A’ level and read Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice). The 1971 Luchino Visconti film adaptation starring Dirk Bogarde is one of my all-time favourites. And one of my husband’s all-time favourite films is Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie (which, incidentally, was on television recently, to mark its 50th anniversary). It is about a couple who, after the death of their young daughter, spend the winter in Venice while the Donald Sutherland character is on a commission to restore an ancient church. I remember when we first watched it together I fantasised about visiting the city in the winter – it seemed so empty! I imagine now though that even in the winter it remains a very busy destination, though I hope sometime in the not too distant future to go there, perhaps in January!

I spotted this book on the city in my local bookshop recently  and my darling daughters picked up my hints and got it for me for Christmas! The author is the acclaimed Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, who comes from Amsterdam, another watery city. The book recounts a life-long love affair with Venice and oozes with the author’s affection. Like me, and no doubt many other visitors, he laments how the city has become overwhelmed by visitors (not unlike his home town of Amsterdam), and only a few thousand permanent residents can now call Venice home. He is also aware that he may also be part of the problem. 

Venice has…already been more than sold. Within the area of San Marco, 90 per cent of the restaurants are run by Chinese, Albanians and people from the Middle East…..I know the stories about the other tourists, and I also know the strategies Venetians have come up with to deny the plague, to ignore it…..In these ice-cold weeks of February and March, the great flood has ebbed away a little. Venetians do not have to contend with the foreigners who have taken their usual seat at their favourite cafe, and as I am writing this I am aware that I too am a tourist.

The above quote comes at the end of the book, but most of it concerns lesser-known Venice, where it remains just about possible to find the secret places and avoid the crowds, like a Jewish cemetery, less esteemed churches, some disused, and a once-impressive garden that is only accessible by appointment and whose guardians are somewhat surprised to welcome a visitor. It is a book to help you get to know another Venice. Perhaps something rather like the little convent that accommodated me in 1986. 

Who knows if I will ever get to see Venice in the winter or if it will be as empty as I want it to be, as in Don’t Look Now. If I do, I will be sure to have this book as my companion. It is translated from the original Dutch by Laura Watkinson and is wonderfully illustrated with photos by the author’s partner Simone Sassen (and in which there are hardly any humans). 

Book review – “To A Mountain in Tibet” by Colin Thubron

It is some time since I posted a book review – pretty shabby for a book review blog, though I like to think my non-review posts are suitably bookish too! I posted last week about my challenges in getting much reading done at the moment; even Why Mummy Drinks, Gill Sims’s very light, asking-to-speed-read, novel that my book club chose, seemed to be taking me ages. It has been a very busy few weeks – my paid work has been quite demanding (as has my non-paid work!), we have been undertaking a big decorating project in the house, plus we are properly working on the garden for the first time since we bought this house four years ago, and I am on revision-watch as one of my kids is on study-leave for exams this summer.

To A Mountian in Tibet imgSo my reading time has been severely curtailed. I managed to finish Why Mummy Drinks just after the book club meeting, just as well it was a quick read and did not require too much mental investment. My other big read for last month, however, did. Colin Thubron’s To A Mountain in Tibet was the April title for my Facebook Reading Challenge. The theme was travel writing, not a genre I know very much about, so I did a fair bit of research before choosing Thubron. It came with some fantastic recommendations. At just over 200 pages, it is not particularly long, but it felt like a very slow read.

The author has written more than a dozen travel books (as well as eight novels), mostly about the East. In this book he crosses the border between Nepal and Tibet on foot, to follow a route taken by thousands of pilgrims each year to Mount Kailas. I confess I had not heard of it, but it is one of the holiest shrines on earth, important to both Hindus and Buddhists. Whilst I have not read much travel writing, I guess my expectation is that it should educate and inform the reader about the location (tick), consider some of the social and political conditions of the people living there (tick), and include the personal reflections of the writer (tick). After all, isn’t travel writing as much about an emotional and psychological journey as well as physical one?

Thubron’s book does all these things and does them well, and the writing is beautiful. I learnt a great deal about Buddhism, about pilgrims’ reasons for undertaking the perilous trek around Kailas, about the political tension between China and Tibet, and about the poverty and social problems in the region, particularly in Nepal. All of that said, I’m afraid I have mixed feelings about the book. I gave it four stars on Goodreads, but there was something languid about the book that at times failed to engage me. Some of the history was rather dry, while the account of the poverty, the terrible conditions in which some of the people in the towns and villages on Thubron’s route live, was brought vividly alive.

The ‘journey’ that Thubron himself is on, in a state of bereavement, all his family members now dead, reflects the motive of many of the pilgrims in whose footsteps he is following. He writes about his late parents, and his long-dead sister, but I feel this wasn’t covered in as much depth as I would have liked. The blurb on the book’s cover indicates this is a major element, but I would disagree and feel the content could have had a little more meaning if these passages had been included in a slightly less random way.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and I would like to read more of Thubron’s work. I imagine if you know a little more of the subject matter it might have greater impact.

Which other travel writers would you recommend?

 

 

Reading challenge April – travel writing

It’s the end of March and time to be thinking about the reading challenge for April. The theme this month is travel writing and I’ve picked Colin Thubron, who is said to be one of the finest living travel authors. It’s not a genre I am very familiar with, although I love and have read quite a few of Dervla Murphy’s books (her book On a Shoestring to Coorg featured on my reading challenge two years ago). So, I thought it would be good to aim high and go for one of the best!

To A Mountian in Tibet imgThe title I have chosen is To A Mountain in Tibet, partly, I’m afraid, because it is one of the slimmer volumes; I’m struggling to keep up with all my planned reading at the moment…where did March go? Ah yes, I know, I spent a lot of time with my mouth open glued to the news and political analysis programmes (the less said about that the better!). Reading the blurb and the reviews of this book, I also feel it encapsulates what I am looking for in a travel book, which is not only the author on a physical journey, but also on some kind of process of learning. In To A Mountain in Tibet Thubron is undertaking a pilgrimage well known to Hindus and Buddhists, but is also a story of him coming to terms with loss and bereavement.

 

It seems appropriate to be reading this book in April, when Easter falls, and when many people will be undertaking journeys of their own. I will be on a family holiday later in the month and this book will be in my suitcase.

I will be posting my review of the March reading challenge book next week, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, so look out for that. This was a re-read for me; I last read it nearly thirty years ago and it has been one of my all-time favourites – find out if I loved it as much second time around!

I would love for you to join the Facebook reading challenge. Do drop by the group’s page if you’d like to.

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Book review: “On a Shoestring to Coorg” by Dervla Murphy

I selected this book for my June reading challenge. June was a slow month for reading for me – half term, plus running my son to and from school for exams ate into my time. So, it took me a while to get through this book. That said, I think it’s genuinely a slow book to read, rather like the unhurried travelling that takes place within the pages. I was very specific in my challenge for the month, which was to read a literary travel book, not a guidebook. I am somewhat perturbed by the preponderance of ‘pack as much into as little as possible’-type travel guides that I see all over the bookshops: the 48 Hours in… series is popular, but the New York Times now has a range of 36 hours in… various European capitals! I’ve spent longer than that in the railway stations and airports of various European cities on my travels in the past! Art imitates life, it is true, and that is the nature of life these days. I feel sure this will be to our detriment, ultimately, but perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way at some point.

On a Shoestring to Coorg imgIf, like me, you find yourself a little nostalgic for an era when travel meant slowing down, getting to know a place and its people  (rather than just taking a selfie with a local and posting to Instagram), and immersing yourself in the new environment, then Dervla Murphy could be the travel writer for you. In On a Shoestring to Coorg, Murphy travels for the first time with her five-year old daughter, Rachel. They travel scarily light (I would take more stuff on a day out when my kids were younger!) with very little money and are dependent on the kindness and hospitality of people they meet, including a number of British ex-pats, who have made India their home in the post-colonial era.

Murphy confesses at the outset to being not especially enamoured of India generally, and openly expresses what she sees as the hypocrisy implicit in Hinduism and the caste system which she feels keeps so many in poverty and destitution. (You have to remember this was written in 1976). However, she and Rachel fall in love with the tiny region of Coorg (in southern India), with its continued observance of many traditions (which she sees as an indicator of the society’s wellbeing), the warmth of its people and the beauty of the landscape.

“Seldom in the 1970s is folk-dancing performed for fun – not self-consciously, to preserve customs, or cunningly, to please tourists. But my pleasure can never be unalloyed when I chance upon such fragile and doomed links with the past. One knows that before Rachel is grown even Coorg will have opted for that pseudo-culture which ‘kills time’ (grimly significant phrase) but leaves the sprit starving.”

They travel further south to Kerala, which Murphy also loves. As the book progresses you get the sense of Murphy settling into the journey more, as she adapts to travelling with her young companion where, previously, this very unusual and idiosyncratic traveller was accustomed to being alone and not having anyone depend upon her. She writes more and more of the landscape:

“Beyond the palmy islands across the bay the sun was sinking in a red-gold sky and when it had gone – so swiftly – a strange amber sheen lay on the water and I felt very aware of the drama of day and night: something that passes us by in the twilit north.”

On a Shoestring to Coorg img 2

It is a meandering but engaging read, where you very much travel with the author and her daughter and feel the pace of their journey. This is a way of travelling that most of us no longer do. It feels very much like a bygone era and yet is only 40 years ago. The pace of change in all our lives all across the globe has altered so dramatically in that relatively short time. It felt good to slow right down with this book. If you fantasise about long slow travelling (with or without your children) you will find this an interesting read and after reading it you will definitely want to go to Coorg!

Do you have any travel writers to recommend? Are there any young contemporary travel  writers you enjoy who take the ‘slow’ approach?

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June reading challenge – a literary travel book

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We have just booked our family summer holiday and so I’m delighted that June’s reading challenge is to read a travel book, not a guidebook, but a literary travel book. I’m certain there will be plenty of titles to choose from in your local charity bookshop, if you’d care to join me.

2017-06-14-13-19-11.jpgI’ve decided to pick a long-neglected title from my well-populated ‘not yet read’ bookcase – On A Shoestring To Coorg: an experience of Southern India by Dervla Murphy. I bought it as part of a set of three some years ago, and of the trio I only read Full Tilt: Dunkirk to Delhi by bicycle. I loved that book: Murphy cycled across Europe to India, through countries like Afghanistan and Iran, before they were devastated by conflict. Sadly, these wonderful and fascinating places will probably not now be visited by travellers for many years so this book provides a vicarious experience that most of us will never be able to have.

Last summer, I watched a wonderful documentary about Murphy on a long-haul flight to New York, where we spent our holiday last year, and I was fascinated once again. Murphy is a complete one-off, somewhat eccentric, perhaps, but undoubtedly fearless and someone who has always pushed the boundaries. She is now 85 and still lives in Co. Waterford in Ireland. On her last trip in 2011 she visited the Gaza Strip.

Murphy has one daughter and On A Shoestring is about a trip she took with her then 5 year-old child. This would no doubt have been been considered a very reckless act in 1973! I wonder if she did it during term-time…?

Everything Everything imgMay’s reading challenge was fairly straightforward, to read a YA novel, and I expected to zip through Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon. Alas, half term and ferrying my eldest to and from GCSE exams has rather cut into my reading time this last few weeks, so I was still reading it a few days into June. However, I have now completed it and will post my review here next week. I thorougly enjoyed it and recommend it highly for YAs and OAs (older adults?!) alike. Look out for my review and let me know your thoughts if you or any teenagers you know have read it.

 

 

I would love for you to join me in my reading challenge this month. What literary travel books do you fancy reading?

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