Book Report: The Aye-Aye and I

21. Gerald Durrell, The Aye-Aye and I: A Rescue Journey to Save One of the World's Most Intriguing Creatures from Extinction (1992) (9/27/22)

The copy I read
has real character!

I bought this book in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Madagascar. Although the book was written over thirty years ago, it remains remarkably current: many of the conditions that Durrell describes—extremely friendly people, simple culinary offerings, challenging roads, and ongoing environmental destruction—seem very familiar.

The story involves Durrell and his team's quest to find six elusive aye-aye—the world's largest nocturnal primate, a two-foot-long lemur with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special-purpose, extra-long middle finger that it uses for foraging. Thought to be extinct in 1933, it was rediscovered in 1957, and since 1987 the Duke Lemur Center (DLC) has kept and bred aye-ayes. It is classified as endangered, although in the wild its numbers are probably higher than had been thought; it remains at risk because Malagasy people consider it evil, a harbinger of death, and so will kill it, and also because its forest homeland is being rapidly decimated.

Durrell's Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust decided to join the DLC in keeping some breeding pairs of aye-ayes to help their chances of survival. Along the way they also collected some ploughshare tortoises, giant jumping rats, and bamboo lemurs of Lac Alaotra, for a full cargo load once their stay was done. But would they be able to find the six aye-ayes they needed?

The answer is delivered in Durrell's typically droll style, where he in passing describes markets, village dances, treacherous bridge and river crossings, strange foods, and the vagaries of local officialdom. The team's members come alive in all their quirkiness. 

But his message is not all lightness. I marked two passages that resonated strongly with my own experience of this place, thirty years on.

This was one of the most depressing drives I have had in Madagascar. The road wound its way through miles and miles of beautiful hills which should have been covered with forest to act as watersheds, but each hillside was bare. Nothing but grass could be seen with red cicatrices of growing erosion showing glaringly. In the valleys around small villages we saw Ravenala palms, coconut palms, a few mango and lychee trees. Very occasionally, on the top of a hill we saw a pathetic little patch of original forest, like tufts of hair on the chin of a badly-shaved man. These remnants showed what the hills were clad in before the destruction. In places the raw, red earth had been cleared on such steep slopes that the soil, with no vegetation to hold it in pace, had no option but to slide into the valley, causing flash floods.
     To the uninitiated eye, these hills looked pleasantly green and lush but in twenty or so years they would bring disaster for those that lived amongst them and endeavoured to obtain a living from the ever-decreasing soil. With no forests acting as the lungs of the hills and holding everything together in a web of roots, the soil was simply sliding away like sand in an hourglass. How can we persuade these charming, poverty-stricken people that slash-and-burn agriculture simply edges them and ultimately their children and grandchildren nearer to starvation? Even with millions of dollars, pounds, marks and yen, it would take hundreds of years to counteract the ravages that have been perpetuated on the land and replace the forest. It seems a terrifying and insoluble problem. . . .
     You cannot blame the Malagasy people, but rather the people who have ruled in the past. To the peasant, the felling of a piece of forest is not looked upon as ecological suicide, but as a way of gaining a bit of soil that will give him a crop for a few years, while the forest he fells forms fuel for the fires that feed him. His forefathers did it, why should not he? He does not know that there are five times as many of him as there were in the grandfather's time and that this profligate use of nature's bounty will starve his grandchildren. 

According to our guide, you can also blame the people who are ruling now: or rather, the corruption that rules this country. People are encouraged to clear the land to plant corn and peanuts, which are then exported to China—filling local functionaries' pockets into the bargain. And in a few short years, the land is spent. 

This is one reason Durrell mounted his mission. The dire situation he was addressing continues. Already in the late 1980s he said that 90 percent of Madagascar's forests had disappeared. Although that figure appears to be inflated, it is predicted that all of the island's natural areas (with the exception of national parks, assuming they can be protected) will have disappeared within forty years. It is well and fine that animals like aye-ayes can live on in zoos around the world, but what a tragedy that their home, and the home of so many other unique and wonderful animals, is rapidly vanishing. 

I enjoyed this book, and it made me sad. This is such a beautiful, amazing country. And I'm seeing only a remnant of what it was not so very long ago.

New camera

Aveiro, Portugal

This year I went a little wild with travel plans—after two years of sitting on our hands. Portugal and France in March–April; the Galápagos in June; Ontario in August. And now, in a few days, we're off on the biggest adventure of the year, or perhaps of our lifetimes—if you don't count Antarctica, which I do. But you can have more than one trip of a lifetime, can't you? Anyway: in a few days, we're off to Madagascar. The name all by itself makes me tingle.

Parque Nacional Galápagos

In honor of the occasion, I bought a new camera. To replace the camera I bought only a few years ago, which I fully expected would be my last camera purchase ever, an Olympus 3/4 mirrorless number. But it, I'm sorry to say, did not live up to expectations. It was flimsy: bits of it fell off. One lens never worked at all, even after an expensive repair. Another lens would sometimes autofocus, sometimes not. I eventually made peace with that last lens, and got some decent shots in the Galápagos, but there was no way I was going to take it to Madagascar.

Meaford, Ontario

My choices were these: use my iPhone only (i.e., step back from "serious" photography); pack the heavy old Canon; or... buy a camera that I've seen more and more glowing reports of. I seriously debated, but eventually, the new camera won. A mirrorless Sony aR7iii.

Today I started studying the users guide. Oy! I will probably keep it mostly on auto/P, but it's good to know about some of the available adjustments: ISO, bracketing, spot metering. I will continue to study the users guide. I may even take it along—it can be my if-we-have-any-spare-time reading material. (Who needs a plot?)

The camera came with a middle-quality kit lens, which I will make do with; I also got a macro lens and a 100–400mm zoom, and a 1.4x teleconverter. I can already picture the little lemur faces peering at me out of the trees as I adjust the focus.

Which—adjusting the focus, manually—is one of the things I grew especially fond of on that lousy Olympus camera. I hope there's a similar feature on this new camera. 

I do love photography: it's my way of seeing. But it's also a sort of tunnel vision, and I have to be careful about getting sucked into the through-the-viewfinder perspective on things. A number of years ago, traveling in France, I made a deal with myself: photograph in the morning, and leave the camera behind in the afternoon. That allowed for close focus part of the time, and a more expansive enjoyment for the rest. It made for a nice balance.

So I am going to Madagascar with a new camera, at least two lenses (we'll see how the luggage packs), and an open heart, mind, and vision. I want to be blown away! Maybe I'll just look, and forget to try to record. That would be just fine. Especially considering how lousy I am at curating and publishing my final shots. I still have, let me see... Israel, Italy, Vietnam, yes Portugal and France, and the Galápagos to process and publish. Well, after this trip, I don't anticipate any more travel for a while. Perhaps I'll turn my attention to photography.

Book Report: The Fear Artist

20. Timothy Hallinan, The Fear Artist (2012) (9/4/22)

It's been a while since I read a Poke Rafferty book (March 2021), but as I was searching for my next read, this one jumped into my hands. Literally! Well, okay, not literally literally: but it did sift out from the pile I was pawing through, plop loudly onto the floor, and wink at me. Seriously! It did!

I like Timothy Hallinan. He's a very good writer (though his publisher could have invested a little more in proofreading). I like his protagonist, Phillip "Poke" Rafferty, and other characters as well: Poke's Thai wife, Rose, and twelve-year-old adoptive daughter, Miaow (who in this volume play but a small role); his half-sister, Ming Li; his police officer friend Arthit. I like the setting of Bangkok, where Poke is ostensibly a travel writer, though all we ever see him do (this is the fifth in the series) is solve random crimes. I like a good murder mystery.

Which—this wasn't. The cover bills this book as a "thriller." The action begins with, yes, a murder—or perhaps more accurately, a hit—of an American man who mutters three words as he lies dying in Poke's arms, and stuffs a laundry slip in Poke's pocket. So "thriller" is, yes, more apropos than "mystery." The CIA is involved (tangentially). The war on terror also. Bad guys, definitely. In particular, one redheaded American bad guy named Murphy who did awful things during the Vietnam War. He is now trying to keep some old truths from coming to light.

At least, I think that's part of what was going on in this book. Maybe I read it too slowly, but in the end, the story arc eluded me a bit. There were a lot of riveting scenes, a lot of action, and in the end, justice prevailed. And yeah, money proved a strong motive (I think?) in the evil that was perpetrated. The story kept nodding at violence in southern Thailand, Muslim against Buddhist, which an author note says is still ongoing, sadly. But it all felt a bit abstract to me, within the context of this story, which takes place entirely in Bangkok. Like Hallinan thought up the villain, and a situation, then tried to mold those into a possible crime. 

But still: by the last chapter Rose and Miaow are home again, and Miaow has a sweet boyfriend named Andrew, and Arthit will forgive Poke for lying to him, I fully trust . . . and I'm already looking to book #6.

Here's the only section I flagged (though if I'd had my flags handy, I might have flagged a couple of others, especially of dialogue: Hallinan does dialogue well). This one, though—it hits hard right now, ten years after this book was published:

Rafferty has always been fascinated by enormous power—power on an imperial scale—exercised in secret. He's spent much of his adult life traveling among the powerless, among people who generally are who they say they are and do what they say they'll do. People who have little and seem unwilling to become someone else in order to have more. In the past decade, this kind of behavior has become regarded by many as naive and even quaint, behavior that identifies people who haven't figured out the new rules.
     Power in the dark seems to Rafferty to be the defining form of evil in the twenty-first century. It's evolved from an occasional governmental tactic into business as usual, as the world's rulers find goals in common—usually economic goals that benefit the rich and strengthen the rulers' hold on power—and pursue them jointly, turning out the lights on the contradictions between what they say and what they do.
     Rafferty can remember, hazily, a time in which getting caught in a lie was a career-threatening crisis for a politician, at least in the countries that retain pretensions of democracy. Now there's a whole thesaurus of euphemisms for lying, and it's opened daily.

Yeah.

And I apologize again for posting a book report that is more mysterious than the actual story itself. I just don't want to give anything away. I guess I figure if I make the report unintelligible, you'll want to read the book? Anyway, I did enjoy this one. Mostly for the good writing (Hallinan is great at metaphor, description, dialogue) and the characterizations; maybe a little less for the plot per se. As a writer myself, though, I can identify. I suck at plot. But description? That's fun.

Frivolity (that's right: geocaching)

The last two weekends, we've gotten out with our caching buddy Alastair. The first trip, to southern Santa Clara County, put up a couple of roadblocks: permits needed in one spot, construction rendering our desired destination out of bounds in another. But eventually we wound up at Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve and spent a glorious afternoon seeking out 31 caches (found 25). Here's some photos:

Started the day at Uvas Reservoir, where we found six caches
on the far side on the right; did not find one. From there,
the roadblocks steered us onward, to Coyote Valley.

Where fortune smiled on us! (Mostly.)

Looking in the general direction of the megalopolis that is
Silicon Valley. There's plenty of wildness even here.

We were struck by the... right-wing paranoia?
of this sign.

One of the caches we found: out in plain sight!
(And yes, I hesitate posting this picture because of
the Indian motif. The cache is called "Meet My Friend
Tonto." I'm sorry. Maybe the ninja helps?)

Yes, thar be lions in these hills.
Probably not too many witchy duckies, though...
With the exception of this one.

This Friday, we headed to Santa Cruz and Wilder Ranch State Park. It was a hot day, and we were grateful for the redwood groves. Though much of our trek ended up being out in the glaring sun. We found 22 caches, DNF 1. Most of the caches in one area had a Halloween theme:

This one has been out in the woods since
2009 and is more disturbing thanks to time.

But we also ran into whimsy:

Here's the "geocacher stance":

And here's a view looking south toward Monterey, with the mountains of Big Sur peeking out in the background:

As always, it was most excellent to spend a day with Alastair, who is great company. Geocaching may be a frivolous hobby, but it gets us out on twelve-mile hikes, punctuated by silliness, and honestly, is there anything better than that?

Book Report: The Cape Doctor

19. E. J. Levy, The Cape Doctor (2021) (8/29/22)

I don't read much historical fiction, but my cousin, who does, recommended this book highly when I saw her a few weeks ago, and I thought, what the heck? I'm glad I picked it up. It's a very interesting story, based on a true one: of a young woman who becomes a man—in dress, in behavior, in profession, in standing, in self-understanding—in order to get somewhere in life. But as much as the story itself, I appreciated being able to inhabit a time so different from my own (and yet in some ways, sadly, still so similar), which allowed me to test my expectations, what I take for granted.  

The story begins circa 1809 in Ireland, London, and finally Edinburgh, where the narrator, Margaret Brackley, and her mother, move so that Margaret can save the family by becoming a doctor. But in order to do so, she must also become a young man: Jonathan Mirandus Perry, so named after a much-admired Venezuelan benefactor and her artist uncle. She takes on the challenge of medical school with gusto, becoming one of the most accomplished students in her class—partly because, feeling uncomfortable being out in society where she might be found out, she spends all her time studying. But also, of course, because she's intelligent.

And here I will switch to "he," which may be how Perry (based on the actual John Miranda Barry) thought of himself as well. He went on to become a physician in the military, and was sent to South Africa (Britain's Cape Colony), where he was soon drawn into the social circle of the Cape governor, Lord Somerset. The two develop a great fondness for each other, though always gentlemanly—until one day, in the crisis of a sudden illness, Perry's secret is revealed. And then the two become lovers.

This may or may not have actually happened: Levy takes what few facts are known and spins them into a satisfyingly moving tale. The facts include the illustrious faculty and curriculum at the Edinburgh medical school, Dr. Barry's petition for hospital care for the less privileged residents of the Cape and for the credentialing of would-be physicians, his discovery of a cure for syphilis in local flora, a duel, a pregnancy (uncovered in autopsy), a sodomy scandal, and Barry's eventual return to London to care for Lord Somerset in his final months. Levy unweights the factual basis of the story by having Perry narrate: it is a work of fiction, after all. 

But it is also an exploration of identity, of self-creation, also of loneliness and love; of being trapped by history, by context. The cover design evokes the mood and emotion of the contents nicely, I think.

Here is a passage from the time when Perry was still in Scotland, and had been befriended by a Lord Basken, who would invite the medical student to his estate at Dryburgh Abbey:

I discerned in my companions at Dryburgh Abbey, as in my classmates, something more important than wealth or formal education; I had the proper shirts, a fine coat and vest of green silk, beautiful shoes with buckles, books of my own to read by candlelight, but I lacked some more essential ingredient—authority, the sense of belonging not just there but anywhere in the world.
     I understood then that this was what those conversations with General Mirandus had been about. Those questions that seemed pointless at the time, speculative games at best, were all for this one end; in soliciting my opinion on books and art, on politics and history, he was not trying to ensure that I had been diligent in my reading, as I'd thought then.
     He was teaching me to have opinions, or rather he was teaching me what my companions possessed without thought or conscious awareness of it, entitlement: he was teaching me to believe that my opinion mattered, that something—law or policy—might come of what I thought, that my arguments counted, that I could, that I would, like him, shape history. Girl that I was.

Dr. Barry left instructions that he should not be undressed upon his death, but should be interred as he was, with no autopsy. The nurse who attended him did not follow those instructions (perhaps she did not know of them), and so discovered that he was, and always had been, a she. At least, anatomically—in terms of reproductive organs. But what about his brain, his heart? As the narrator remarks more than once, in the end we are all so very similar. When it comes to intelligence, accomplishments, needs and wants, abilities and desires, our reproductive organs matter little. Would that we could all be simply accepted as human.

 

Book Report: How the Light Gets In

18. Louise Penny, How the Light Gets In (2013) (8/22/22) (BB #5)

Book number 9 in the Armand Gamache series—and my third for this very year, it seems. I do enjoy the characters Penny has created, the tiny village of Three Pines, and the trouble she can get people into. Going for a visit there helps me relax. Even while I hope to help solve the mystery at hand.

This one involves a variation on the Dionne Quintuplets, when the last surviving one is murdered in her home—with a crucial link to Three Pines. But behind the scenes, there's rampant corruption in Quebec's police department to be fought, including the dismantling of Gamache's homicide division. There's the tragic dissolution of Gamache's beloved right-hand man Jean-Guy Beauvoir. There's also bacon, snow sloshing into boots, the difference between a bookstore and a librairie, satellite dishes and computer hacking, and the "Huron Carol." 

As she often does, Penny combines stories. I'm not sure I entirely bought the "motive" in the Quints murder, but who knows? In a situation that unique, anything might go, right? As for the corruption story, Penny pulls out all the stops. But thanks to our hero, well... I'm not going to give anything away. Gamache does, however (this isn't really giving anything away, because I don't believe it for a second), resign. 

I wonder how book 10 will begin?

It's difficult to review a Louise Penny mystery. When I come back and reread these reports, I myself often wonder just what the book was about. But seriously: I don't want to give anything away.

Anyway, this one I rated 4 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. I didn't flag any passages to quote.  Except possibly this one.

But he realized Henri already knew all he'd ever need. He knew he was loved and he knew how to love.

Henri being Gamache's German shepherd.

 

Book Report: Silverview

17. John Le Carré, Silverview (2022) (8/14/22)

I haven't read all that much John le Carré: I may be too impatient for his suggestiveness, his sleight-of-hand. I tried A Perfect Spy not too long ago, which seems unanimously deemed to be his best book, but . . . well, let's just say I wasn't in the mood for the inimitable le Carré style. 

Now, having successfully finished this rather short book of his (and his last published, though it was written ca. 2013), I might be primed for more. He is an awfully damn good writer.

The story here involves "the Service," and former spies, dying spies, janitorial spies, outraged spies, reluctant spies, vigilant spies. It centers (obliquely) on young Julian, who has fled London and a high-stakes life in finance and now, having made his fortune, has opened a bookshop in a quiet East Anglian town. Into his shop comes Edward Avon, and a friendship ensues. Though it's possible Avon has more on his mind than mere friendship. Another key character is Stewart Proctor, who in the first chapter is presented with a letter, the contents of which we are not privy to, but we know it arouses concern. Proctor proceeds to track down Avon's former handlers from their days during the Bosnian War. Stories are told.

Indeed, stories are told: that, surely, is le Carré's greatest gift—as a storyteller, a weaver of tales. The framing story is just a good excuse for the many, interlinked or merely tangential, stories of so many characters. 

In one scene, Julian and Avon meet at a now-deserted former experimental military site, Orford Ness (and now a nature preserve).

[Julian] knew what to expect of the godforsaken loneliness of that outpost in the middle of nowhere. He knew that even fishermen supposedly found it unbearable. They followed a pedestrian walk past rubbish bins, climbed a rickety wooden stairway, and waded through a mess of mud and ships' junk to emerge on a littered quayside.
     Edward struck out left. The river wall forced them into single file. Pebbles of rain whipped off the sea. Edward swung round in his tracks.
     'We are famous for our bird life here, actually, Julian,' he announced, with proprietorial pride. 'We have lapwing, curlew, bittern, meadow pipit, avocets, not to mention duck,' he declared, like a headwaiter reciting the day's specials. 'Look now, please. You hear that curlew calling to her mate? Follow my arm.'
     Julian made a show of doing so, but for some minutes he had been able to follow only the horizon: the remains of our own civilisation after its destruction in some future catastrophe. And there they stood: distant forests of abandoned aerials rising out of the mist, abandoned hangars, barracks, accommodation blocks and control rooms, pagodas on elephantine legs for stress-testing atom bombs, with curved roofs but no walls in case the worst happens. And, at his feet, a warning to him to stick to marked paths or reckon with unexploded ordnance.
     'You are moved by this hellish place, Julian?' Edward enquired, observing his distraction. 'I too.'
     'Is that why you come here?'
     'Yes, it is,' he replied with unusual candour. And, taking Julian's arm, a thing he had never done before: 'Listen hard. Do you listen? Now tell me what you hear about the screaming of the birds.' And when Julian heard nothing but more screams and the skirmishing of the wind: 'How about the rumble of the guns of our glorious British past? No? No guns?'
     'What do you hear?' Julian asked awkwardly, with a laugh to dispel the severity of Edward's stare.
     'I?'—as ever, surprised to be asked. 'Why, the guns of our glorious future. What else?'

In an afterword, Le Carré's son, Nick Cornwell, muses about why the manuscript for this book, which was basically finished and perfect, languished in a desk drawer for so many years.

Silverview does something that no other le Carré novel ever has. It shows a[n intelligence] service fragmented: filled with its own political factions, not always kind to those it should cherish, not always very effective or alert, and ultimately not sure, any more, that it can justify itself. In Silverview, the spies of Britain have, like many of us, lost their certainty about what the country means, and who we are to ourselves. As with Karla in Smiley's People, so here with our own side: it is the humanity of the service that isn't up to the task—and that begins to ask whether the task is worth the cost.
     I think he couldn't quite bring himself to say that out loud. I think, knowling or not, he choked on being the bearer of these truths to—of—from—the institution that gave him a home when he was a lost dog without a collar in the middle of the twentieth century. I think he wrote a wonderful book, but, when he looked at it, he found it cut too close to the bone, and the more he worked on it, the more he refined it, the plainer that became—and here we are.
     You can form your own opinion, and it will be as good as mine, but that's what I believe.
     My father is in these pages, striving as he always did to tell the truth, spin the yarn, and show you the world.

This book, too, was on Barack Obama's summer reading list. Which is probably why I bought it. Glad I did. Thanks, Mr. President.