Recent reads reviewed

Madhuri’s short reviews of books by Gerald Durrell, Michael Magazanik, Kristin Louise Duncombe, Terry Darlington, Adam Skolnick

Beasts in My Belfry
by Gerald Durrell

The famous naturalist/conservationist/writer tells here about his first zoological job, when he was a teen, at a place called Whipsnade, in the English countryside. There are all sorts of characters, both human and creature, described with vivid humour, and we really see the difference in how zoological collections were then regarded – as casual entertainment, employing village labourers at low wages – and now, when career zoologists predominate and conservation and breeding are paramount. Some of this latter can, it seems, be attributed to the hard work of Durrell, who was forward-thinking.

It’s a slim volume and good to read – funny and intelligent and so well told. We meet tigers, lions, tapirs, a giraffe (with which Durrell was very impressed) and all sorts of buffaloes, bisons, etc etc – all couched amongst a time when winters were colder and food was basic and local and people expected to be uncomfortable a lot.

Silent Shock
The Men behind the thalidomide scandal and an Australian family’s long road to justice
by Michael Magazanik

If you convict some Nazis who were higher-ups in concentration camps – including a doctor or two who experimented on people – of mass murder and sentence them to 8 years in prison; then quietly give them clemency after 5 years and release them into the business world, where pharmaceutical companies welcome some happily – what can go wrong?

A best-selling sedative marketed as excellent for pregnant women and morning sickness – which has never been tested on pregnant animals. It is marketed as being extremely safe – that is its great selling point – on the basis of no evidence at all. When reports start rolling in about first peripheral nerve damage and then malformed or dead babies, the company lies and covers up. This is a story to rival any of the American corporate-greed horrors we’ve ever heard of.

In fact, the female FDA doctor in charge of approving new medicines refused to approve it, despite enormous pressure. But all over the world, many countries suffered an epidemic of birth defects, mostly missing of deformed limbs. And the company, Grunenfeld, stoically denied everything, always.

50 years later, an Australian law firm takes on the task of trying to get fair compensation for some Australian victims. This is the well-told story, by one of the lawyers. Excellent investigative law and investigative journalism; compassionate and clear and really well done.

I am anyway suspicious of all pills, and this made me never want to take another one. One pill taken in the first trimester was enough to destroy the foetus’s possibility to grow limbs!

Hair-raising; yet another example of how ready our species can be to cynically visit cruelty on our fellows. And lie about it. Worth reading, in case you were in any doubt! We meet lots of interesting characters along the way, and it’s strange and incongruous how the grey post-war German business milieu manages to invade sunny Australia. And New Zealand. And etc etc etc.

Object
A Memoir
by Kristin Louise Duncombe

A self-published memoir of excellent quality – both content and presentation.

The author’s father was a diplomat who was moved to far-flung countries, where diplomat families lived in cushy enclaves and the State Department oversaw their every need. In the Ivory Coast, in 1982, she was a child in a swimming pool at a party, and her best friend’s jocular dad, whom everybody liked and who was known to be great with kids, molested her underwater. This went on for 2 horrible years, and when finally another child victim spoke up (there were many), the man and his family were moved to another post and the crimes ignored. “Case closed!” Insisted the State Department to all the furious, freaked-out parents.

The little girl grows up and becomes wild and promiscuous. Has a long marriage in which she is oppressed. Then finds the courage to break free and enter therapy again. (She is herself a psychotherapist.) Lives in Geneva with her kids. It’s a moving and relevant and fascinating story, well-told. There are adventures in Delhi and on a road trip across the States and other far-flung places. Her terrible insecurity yields to understanding and creativity – and we are glad that she has managed to tell her tale.

Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
by Terry Darlington

Sometimes one lucks onto just the right book to suit circumstances and mood. I wanted diversion and laughter and the soothing that beautiful language gives. This unique, peculiar, lyrical, and funny memoir does all that.

A retired couple take their whippet Jim – the narrow dog of the title – on their 60-ft-long, 7-ft-wide narrowboat across the English Channel and through the canals of France. Along the way they meet all sorts of people and drink all sorts of wine and quote all sorts of poetry and have mishaps and good times; and all along the way Jim is his doggy self and actually hates boating. He loves pubs.

The author is Welsh, which might explain the word ways. “I slowed for a lock, past a yellow American machine, one of those backhoe loaders mowers pruners diggers that is without shape because it seems to be folded into itself, all but the one arm or set of teeth that is doing the damage, as its tracks heave it back and forth and it’s engine makes the air shimmy like jelly.” He is also utterly without practical sense or skills, and his wife bitches at him freely and bitterly, which he reports matter-of-factly and verbatim.

I felt the language like music and also as an agreeable challenge – you have to stay awake to follow the shortcuts and convolutions both.

One Breath
Freediving, Death and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits
by Adam Skolnick

A beautiful, compassionate book about a very odd sport and one of its star athletes, who went too far and suffered the consequences. It’s also a bit of a detective story as researchers try to find out exactly what killed him.

In Freediving you ‘sip and pack’ air into your lungs all the way to your shoulder blades, then dive down to 100, 150, 200 meters, often helped by a mono-fin, so that you swim like a dolphin or mermaid. In a competition, a plate with a Velcro marker awaits you there which you affix to your wetsuit and then you swim back up and emerge and state to the judges clearly “I am okay.” So you’ve held your breath for 4, 5, 6, or even 7 minutes. You can also swim pool laps on one breath underwater.

Here’s the thing: the ‘mammalian dive reflex’ sends blood to your core and slows your heart, under the pressure of the water when you deep-dive, and you go into an empty presence state. You have to be super-relaxed as worries burn oxygen. People love the nirvana space and keep going back for more.

The young man whose life we read about was a burn-the-candle-at-both-ends sort, generous and gifted and passionate, and he really lived intensely, widely, and colourfully. The author admired him whilst regretting his driven-ness that did not let him rest his lungs in between dives. He just kept training and practising. But the medical help he received after his final dive is also called into question.

We read about the lives of several other contenders in the various competitions run in various deep -water parts of the world. I marvelled at how different people are: I would never have come up with such an idea. I knew pearl divers have freedived for centuries, but would not ever want to try it! One teacher says: “The perfect dive isn’t about how deep you go and it’s not about suppressing your pain. It’s about finding those spaces between the thoughts, where you can live purely in the moment. That’s easier underwater than on the surface, believe me.”

At 312 pages, this book will give you ample time to be submerged. I kept feeling that I was reading it underwater, and was amazed that I could breathe!

Featured image credit to Awar Jahfar Azizi – unsplash.com/@awarnerway

These reviews were first posted on Facebook by the author