Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky (translator Christine Lo)

There is something about islands which captures the imagination, about which every person has an instinctive reaction. Perhaps that reaction is fear: a terror of being trapped or contained, a horror of being isolated or alone. Perhaps that reaction is exuberance: the prospect of forging your own destiny unhindered by wider society, the idea of being free and independent, self-reliant. Our reaction to the idea of an island may depend on mood. Perhaps in a good frame of mind we envisage our island as a paradise rich with bird and plant life, luscious blue seas and a cocktail bar on the beach. In more forbidding moods we may imagine our island to be tiny and desolate, edged by vicious rocks and a wild sea, a tempestuous wind. Even for those of us that live on an island, as I do, the islands of our imagination rarely match the real thing and it can be hard to conceptualise the idea that we are alone and isolated, cut off from the mainland, though ringed by seas that cannot be bridged without reasonably advanced technology.  There are so many of us here, after all. Yet something about this reminds me how once I became trapped in an elevator, and the whole time I felt like a person abandoned on an island, isolated and alone. I quite enjoyed it, but the experience lasted only around 1 hour and 15 minutes and I was well provisioned. Surviving on a remote island may be a different proposition entirely.

“It struck me for the first time that islands are in fact small continents and that continents are in turn no more than very large islands. This clearly outlined piece of land was quite perfect and yet lost at the same time, like the loose sheet of paper on which it had been drawn. Every connection to the mainland had been lost. There was no mention of the rest of the world. I have never seen a lonelier place.”

Judith Schalansky explains in the detailed introduction to this book, tantalisingly sub-titled “Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will”. I often skip book introductions, impatient to get to the ‘meat’ of the story, but this introduction is well worth reading as though it Schalansky explains both the concept for this book and what the exploration, from the safety of her study or library, has taught her about what islands mean to people. “a land surrounded by water is perceived as the perfect place for utopian experiments” is one answer; “The attraction of a beautiful void” another. Perhaps more disturbingly “the island that has been the focus of so much yearning often turns out – as might have been expected – barren and worthless” or “a remote island makes a natural prison: surrounded by the monotonous, insurmountable walls of a persistent, ever-present sea”. Chilling just to think about it.

The fifty islands themselves are an eclectic bunch, and their stories are unique and, whilst brief, strangely satisfying. It is a book to read at leisure, taking time over each story to absorb its brief beauty. Organised by ocean, Schalansky devotes a page to text and a page for a map of each island. She shows us islands inhabited and uninhabited. Islands abandoned and islands claimed. Islands which are remote, inaccessible, frozen and lifeless. Islands with unusual and dying customs. Some islands are more familiar than others: Easter Island, for example, that monument to human folly; Iwo Jima representing folly of a different kind. But it is the stories themselves that fascinate, like here as Schalansky describes Lonely Island, a Russian island in the Kara Sea shaped, curiously, like a decaying leaf. Now abandoned, a record of the island’s history remains in the log book from polar observatory that had existed on the island and Schalansky draws our particular attention to its last entry:

“The final entry in red felt-tip pen spills over the confines of the columns: 23 November 1996: the evacuation order came today. Pouring the water out. Turned off diesel generator. The station is…The final word is illegible. Welcome to Lonely Island.”

But this book, whilst focused on the islands, is also a love letter to the art and adventure of cartography. Schalansky didn’t set out to find these islands, instead she traced them on dusty old rolls of paper hidden somewhere in an archive or the dark belly of the public library. What she learned of the islands, she learned through meticulous exploration of records and archives, old newspaper reports and notes from scientific journals. “It is high time for cartography to take its place among the arts,” she says, “and for the atlas to be recognised as literature, for it is more than worthy of its original name: theatrum terratum, the theatre of the world.”

I’m inclined to agree. I, too, have a love of maps. I remember, as a child, tracing the outlines of countries in my hand-me-down Australian encyclopaedias that had belonged to my brother and sister when they had lived on that rather larger, warmer island than the one I found myself growing up on. I remember my own drawings of islands: imaginary ones and those intended as representations of the real, taking care over all the tiny twists and turns of the coastline refining, perhaps, inaccuracy to something in the order of hundreds of miles. Even now I have a ritual when we go camping that I will always pick up the Ordnance Survey map of the area, and it is a small excitement unfolding the map, laying it out on the uneven ground and tracing the contours I can see if I only look up and around me. Finding the odd place names and trying to imagine how they came to be. The secret pleasure in being able to refold it properly, which always seems near impossible. My children, on account of this exposure, have inherited this love too, and this makes me wonder if the joy of map tracing is something of a dying art, as the world moves to a more ‘accurate’ and less romantic digital view. Perhaps as long as gorgeous books like this one exists, the art of cartography and the joy of map exploration on a damp Sunday afternoon will long continue. I hope so. 

Tracks by Robyn Davidson

Sometimes there are books you pick up and you know instantly that you’re going to love them. For me, Tracks was one of those books. It may have helped that I had already watched the movie, and it was this that had prompted me to decide to read the book anyway, but I’m not convinced that explains it entirely. Instead there is something about the cadence of the early paragraphs, the feeling of the words spinning me straight into the mind of this woman “There are some moments in life that are like pivots around which your existence turns – small intuitive flashes, when you know you have done something correct for a change, when you think you are on the right track. I watched a pale dawn streak the cliffs Day-glo and realised this was one of them. It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated confidence – and lasted about ten seconds.”

Tracks is the true story of how Robyn Davidson set out to cross the Australian desert accompanied only by camels. She arrived in Alice Springs, a town for which she expresses little affection, equipped only with an idea, a dog (Diggity) and an independent streak. Davidson had no money, no real knowledge of camels and no support network in the local vicinity. Consequently she spent much of her early time in Alice Springs being taken advantage of, working rubbishy jobs, not really getting anywhere, hating the misogyny and the nasty attitudes towards the indigent Aboriginal population.

A considerable part of the book describes how Davidson put off, by any means possible, actually starting out on this journey. For a start, she knew next to nothing about camels and had to learn from scratch. This resulted in an exploitative relationship with a local camel rancher called Kurt whose behaviour was manipulative and abusive. Eventually she exits this relationship, but does so without getting hold of the camels she needs. Later on when she does acquire her camels, the problems she faces continue to grow. The camels are frequently sick, one of her first camels has to be euthanized due to illness, and when they’re not sick they’re wandering off. This trend continues on her trek.

I enjoyed the honesty that Davidson conveys in this early part of the story. That she was torn between going and not going becomes apparent, and some of her behaviour suggests that not going is the preferred option. She recognises this in herself, in her uncompromising nature which will not allow her to borrow the money she needs to start the trek. Then she encounters Rick Smolen, a photographer for National Geographic who convinces her to allow the magazine to sponsor her trip. She agrees, but at a cost: Rick must photograph her along the way and she must allow the magazine to report on her journey. Thus she embarks on a love/hate relationship with both Rick and the magazine which crops up at regular intervals throughout the trip (pretty much whenever Rick appears to take photographs).

The trip itself is the real meat of the story, and Davidson is equally honest about this. A lot of the time she hates the journey, the endless walking, the pain, the camels disappearing, the heat, the sweating, the drab food. Yet there are moments of sheer transcendence, as she describes here:

“And as I walked through that country, I was becoming involved with it in a most intense and not yet fully conscious way. The motions and patterns and connections of things became apparent at a gut level. I didn’t just see the animal tracks, I knew them. I didn’t just see the bird, I knew it in relationship to its actions and effects. My environment began to teach me about itself without my full awareness of the process. It became an animate being of which I was a part[…] What was once a thing that merely existed became something that everything else acted upon and had a relationship with and vice versa. In picking up a rock I could not longer simply say, “this is a rock,” I could now say. “This is part of a net,” or closer, “This, which everything acts upon, acts.” When this way of thinking became ordinary for me, I too became lost in the net and the boundaries of myself stretched out for ever.”

This is not just a story about a journey, but also a story about a place and time. Whilst Davidson is a key character, so is the desert, so is Australia and so are the Aboriginal people who make their home in this seemingly barren land. Davidson reflects widely on the position of Aboriginal people in Australian society and the cultural identity of the people themselves. That she generated a high degree of respect and admiration for these oft put down people is heavily apparent throughout the book, and whilst drawing the line at a complete understanding the nature of Aboriginal links to the land become more apparent to Davidson as she traverses the desert. I always find talk of the Aboriginal beliefs soul-stirring and this was no different hear. Davidson shares with affection her time travelling with Eddie, an aged Aboriginal man who helped her across a difficult part of the desert. I think this part of the story was the most heartwarming for me.

She also discusses in some depth the misogyny inherent in Australian ‘outback’ culture, and the way in which being absent from it freed her from social conventions. I’m not sure Davidson set out to write a feminist book, but throughout her musings she is also unable to contain her absolute belief that women, people, can achieve anything they set their minds to. As she explains here:

“I was now a feminist symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer (though not as crazy as I would have been had I failed). But worse than that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything. And that was true especially for women, who have used cowardice for so long to protect themselves that it has become a habit.

The world is a dangerous place for little girls. Besides, little girls are more fragile, more delicate, more brittle than little boys. ‘Watch out, be careful, watch.’ ‘Don’t climb trees, don’t dirty your dress, don’t accept lifts from strange men. Listen, but don’t learn, you won’t need it.’ And so the snail’s antennae grow, watching for this, looking for that, the underneath of things. The threat. And so she wastes so much of her energy, seeking to break those circuits, to push up the millions of tiny thumbs that have tried to quelch energy and creativity and strength and self-confidence; that have so effectively caused her to build fences against possibility, daring; that have so effectively kept her imprisoned inside her notions of self-worthlessness.”

I have noticed a trend in my more recent reading, something I seem to seek out, to desire. It appears in this book in buckets, it was present in A Woman in the Polar Night, in Full Tilt, in Lost Paradise and A Book of Silence. It is this idea of transcending the limits of human social construct, of reaching a moment of pure blending with the world, of being present and at one and at peace. I crave it. I wish I knew why, but until I do I am willing to keep seeking and finding it in wonderful books like this. Tracks is quite different in character to the movie (for those who have seen it), it is more raw and brutal, it is more present, Davidson breathes hot dust and sand through the pages. She sees with honesty and frailty; she is human, she is alive and she is free.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

This book was a gift from a friend, and it’s been languishing on my shelves for some time (as books often are) waiting to be read. It’s exactly the kind of book I would like: non-fiction (because I am trying to read more non-fiction…and succeeding), written by a woman about a woman, sciency. All those things add up to a considerate gift. So why had it been sitting on my shelves for so long? The answer: it seemed like quite a daunting read. So when I signed up to the #TBR20 initiative over on Twitter, this seemed like the exact kind of book that should be on my list.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of one woman’s search to find the story of the life of another woman, a poor black woman who died in the 1950s from cervical cancer, whose cells have changed the face of modern medicine. The cells, known as HeLa, have allowed significant medical advancement to be made because they were the first cells that were successfully grown and kept alive outside the human body. As a student of biology Skloots learned of the HeLa cells and how important they’ve been in medical science – enabling development of a polio vaccine, cancer therapies, cloning and gene mapping – but discovered that little was known about the woman herself. So she set out to write this story which is at once a personal history - piecing together Henrietta Lacks from her medical records and the vague memories of friends and family, many of which have suffered as a result of the famous cells - as well as a potted history of cell culture, including both the development and ethics of this branch of medical science.

What follows is an incredibly engaging story. Skloots is open about her investigations, she manages to insert her search for Henrietta Lacks’s story into the book though it’s neither arrogant nor self-serving or intrusive. Instead we learn through Rebecca’s eyes how the Lacks family have been affected both by their personal loss – the loss of Henrietta as a mother, partner, cousin – as well as the impact of having Henrietta’s famous cells linked to their family. There is also the ethical impact: in the case of the medicine industry millions of dollars have been earned selling Henrietta’s cells, yet the Lacks family, including Henrietta’s children, are so poor they can’t even afford medical insurance. Henrietta’s cells have benefitted millions, enabled many people to become rich, yet not the Lacks family itself.

This leads, neatly, onto the question of medical ethics which is explored in some depth in the book. Skloot manages to sit very carefully on the fence neither judging for or against the medicine industry. On the one hand there is considerable benefit in allowing the medical profession to conduct research openly and freely, so the idea of allowing individuals a proprietary interest over their tissues and cells could inhibit medical progress. On the other hand, some appalling abuses have taken place in both the context of medical research programmes and the acquisition of samples from living patients. It raises some interesting questions about the nature of informed medical consent that still need to be answered today. I found myself horrified by stories of medical experimentation such injecting healthy and unhealthy patients with HeLa cells to see if they developed cancer, without telling them that there was a cancer risk (many injectees went on to develop tumours). In many cases these experiments were conducted on black people, and there’s a sense throughout the book that the black community were subjected to some terrible treatment simply on account of being black, including Henrietta’s deaf & dumb daughter Elsie who died shortly after Henrietta in an overcrowded and dirty asylum where she, too, had been experimented on. There’s also the question of whether allowing organisations to apply a proprietary right over things like genes is, in and of itself, a greater inhibiting factor. The idea that organisations must be allowed to make money or research will not happen is a silly one; history is peppered with examples of scientists undertaking research as a matter of following curiosity, or out of a personal interest (loss of a family member) or simply for the common good. Included in this is George Gey, the man whose lab took Henrietta’s cells and grew and grew them. Cells that he gave away, freely, enabling others to conduct research and make money whilst he remained always on the cusp of broke.

But this is a story about Henrietta, and Skloots manages, through careful piecing together, to construct the story of Henrietta Lacks. It is a name more of us ought to know, to understand how her contribution has led to significant medical advancement. Her story is not an untroubling one; her children have led difficult lives and are variously proud and fed up with the story of HeLa. Skloot doesn’t let us forget that this is a story about a woman, a family and a community, that at the heart of the HeLa story is a dead young woman who left behind a grieving family which have never quite recovered from her loss.

Was it a daunting read? No, it wasn’t. At times it was infuriating (arrogant researchers); at others it was touching, sad, uplifting. It was certainly enlightening, and definitely a worthwhile read. Many thanks to the considerate friend who saw this book and knew it was perfect for me.

Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy

When I was first branching out into reading more non-fiction, I thought it would be good to read some travel writing. I’d enjoyed the nature books so much, that travel seemed like a natural next step. I remember browsing the shelves at Waterstones and seeing lots of titles that looked fascinating, including those by Sibylle Bedford and Freya Stark who I suspect I will be investigating at some point in the future. In the end it was Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy that most caught my imagination, combining my dual loves of travel and bicycles (though my own bicycle is feeling a little neglected these days).

Full Tilt represents the diary that Dervla Murphy kept when she undertook a journey from Ireland to India by bicycle. Well, not exactly by bicycle; there’s a reason why this book is titled Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle as much of the time Murphy isn’t able to cycle: either due to the quality of the roads or weather conditions. At the time, Murphy was a mere 32 years old and she travelled alone. The year was 1963, and the journey was one she had envisaged since the age of ten when, as she explains, she received both a bicycle and an atlas as a birthday present. This journey was something of a lifelong dream, and it is a credit to Murphy’s self-will that it was a dream she was determined to fulfil.

This whole book is a testament to Murphy’s self-determination, her spirit and openness, her willingness to push herself to the absolute limits. By the time I was around a third of the way through the book, Murphy was my heroine. She is an amazing woman, the kind of woman whose feats should be known to all, a role model whose name should fall off the lips along with the other great explorers, distinguished by the fact that she didn’t fail. I’m gibbering, I know, but if there was ever an example of fearlessness, she is definitely it. In the course of her journey she suffers multiple vehicle accidents, is attacked by wolves as she describes with aplomb here (note: Roz is the name of her bicycle):

“It was soon after 6pm when, leaving Roz on the truck, I set off along a convenient cart-track through the trees, where the snow had been packed down by sleighs collecting fire-wood. It was some fifteen minutes later when a heavy weight hurled itself at me without warning.

I stumbled, dropping the torch that I had been carrying, then recovered my balance, and found one animal hanging by its teeth from the left shoulder of my wind-cheater, another worrying at the trousers around my right ankle, and a third standing about two yards away, looking on, only its eyes visible in the starlight.

Ironically enough, I had always thought that there was something faintly comical in the idea of being devoured by wolves. It had seemed the sort of thing that doesn’t really happen…So now, as I braced my body against the hanging weight, slipped off my glove, pulled my .25 out of my pocket, flicked up the safety catch and shot the first animal through the skull, I was possessed by the curious conviction that none of this was true, while at the same time all my actions were governed by sheer panic.”

In addition she suffers numerous rape attempts (which she dispatches with similar aplomb, if not loss of life), several broken ribs on being struck accidentally by the butt of a gun, is stung by a scorpion followed, the very next day, by hornets, near-fatal sunstroke, almost drowning and near starvation. It is astonishing that she lived to share the tale of her journey, but her strength of character and extraordinary determination carried her through. And yes, I am gibbering again.

Murphy herself is at pains to point out how ordinary she is, perhaps to stave off the kind of heroine-worship I’m falling into here. As she explains in the beginning:

“This is perhaps the moment to contradict the popular fallacy that a solitary woman who undertakes this sort of journey must be ‘very courageous’. Epictetus put it in a nutshell when he said, ‘For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.’ And because in general the possibility of physical danger does not frighten me, courage is not required; when a man tries to rob or assault me or when I find myself, as darkness is falling, utterly exhausted and waist-deep in snow half-way up a mountain pass, then I am afraid – but in such circumstances it is the instinct of self-preservation, rather than courage, that takes over.’

I think she is too modest. I think she is both a courageous and fearless woman, and we could all learn a lot from her. Perhaps Murphy, here, reflects a more altruistic society in which it was not considered ‘strange’ for women to pursue their dreams, to take risks and seek adventure. Perhaps the fact that she has to mention it is proof that we’re not there yet.

There, I’ve gibbered enough. Now to her journey. We join Murphy as she enters Europe and quickly she covers the period during which she cycles through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and into Turkey. Much of this early part of the journey is covered in quite superficial detail (wolves excepted) though the journey was doubtless eventful and more difficult than anticipated. Problems with roads and difficult weather conditions meant that much of the time she was unable to cycle, but instead travelled by bus or by truck.

The story really starts as she enters Afghanistan, a country for which she develops a real and palpable fondness. Everywhere she goes she discovers spectacular landscapes, as she describes here:

“We left Kabul at 7am in perfect cycling weather with a brilliant, warm sun, a cool breeze behind u and the air crisp and clear. Beyond a doubt today’s run up the Ghorband valley was the most wonderful cycle-ride of my life. Surely this must have been the Garden of Eden – it’s so beautiful that I was too excited to eat the lunch my hostess had packed for me and spent the day in a sort of enchanted trance. High hills look down on paddy-fields and vivid patches of young wheat and neat vineyards; on orchards of apricot, peach, almond, apple and cherry trees smothered in blossom, and on woods of willows, ash, birch and sinjit, their new leaves shivering and glistening in the wind and sun. Lean, alert youths, their clothes all rags and their bearing all pride, guard herds of cattle and nervous, handsome horses and donkeys with woolly, delicately tripping foals, and fat-tailed sheep with hundreds of bouncing lambs, and long-haired goats whose kids are among the most delightful of young animals.”

Of the people she has much to say of their kindness, of their desperate poverty, of their culture, their manners and their intelligence, not to mention their smell! It is apparent that the Afghan people won her over with their sharing and considerate nature. She discovers a similar fondness both for the land and the people of Pakistan, and a somewhat more reserved feeling about India, though the roads, apparently, were much improved.

In a time where all you hear about Afghanistan are references to the Taliban and terrorism (or drugs), and when the Muslim religion is under such intense criticism and pressure, this book is a real antidote to the constant negative press. Murphy has much to say of the joint stresses caused to Afghanistan by the presence of Western powers and Communist Russia, much positive commentary on the Muslims she encounters, their sobriety, kindness, generosity and politeness. She has much to say about the impact of the religion on the territory, as well as the status of women in that society. Some of what she says is quite surprising (even to herself) yet always considered. That she came to love both Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite the privations of her journey, is apparent in all the wonderful things she has to say about those countries. It is a fascinating insight into a land and a time when globalisation had done, perhaps, slightly less damage.

Full Tilt is a humorous, soulful and inspiring read. Murphy herself embodies a kind of openness which is rarely encountered, and a kind of determination that ensures that all her experiences, even the difficult ones, are positive. There is no mawkishness here, no self-pity. She endures, and she thrives in her endurance. I thoroughly enjoyed this travel diary, and am eager to read some more. I hear that Murphy still travels with her bicycle (a new one, I suspect) even though she is now in her seventies. What a heroine! I’m so glad she was able to undertake this journey and, more so, share it with the rest of us. A name I will be promoting with tedious regularity (and I hear she has a new book out this year. I can’t wait!). As a double-positive, it may have inspired me to get back on my bike!