The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend

Book Description

Now in paperback: A magical book about an ancient legend-that the seal was once human, and can sometimes resume human form--and about the Celtic fishing families who still tell it, sing it, believe it.

Raised among Scottish fishermen and storytellers, David Thomson was obsessed from childhood by the Celtic seal legend, the body of tales and songs about the "selchie," or gray Atlantic seal. In the early 1950's he took a journey to seek the legend out, in the Hebrides, on the east coast of Scotland, on the west coast of Ireland-places where magic co-exists with reality and pre-Christian traditions and beliefs somehow endure.

He gives us here the fruits of his search as he found it, and tells us something of the men, women, and children from whom he heard the stories. He also tells of his own encounters with seals, and the dreamlike hold that these have had on him. The result is, in the words of his friend Seamus Heaney, a poetic achievement-a work of "intuitive understanding, perfect grace, and perfect pitch."

Customer Reviews:

A Glimpse of a Lost World.......2007-06-29

A charming book with a telling title. In The People of the Sea, Thomson recounts many evenings on the more remote coasts of the British Isles in the first half of the twentieth century.

While he is chasing stories about his little obsession (folklore of the grey seal -- one "people of the sea"), a modern reader may be more fascinated by the fishermen, ferrymen, farmers and families that he meets as he drops in on these rugged coastal backwaters. (A second "people of the sea").

While Thomson listens to an intriguing variety of old stories (some ancient and glorious and others more like the urban myths so much discussed today), the people he meets are amazed at his occasional mentions of modern conveniences like gas stoves.

He meets people who live by peat fires and paraffin lamps. They fish from rowed boats of tarred cloth. There are no telephones, televisions and people still entertain each other with stories.

If you enjoy this book, you might find almost as good a look at fairy tales in context between the covers of a more recent book: Meeting the Other Crowd.

Oh, that I could give more than five stars.......2005-07-22

I first came across this book in Ireland during the late 70's. It has become one of my very favorites. I've given copies to people and at one time gave away my last one to a writer who also wrote Selkie tales. Fortunately, I was able to get more.

As I read the book I feel as though I'm right there with him...the look, the feel, the smell of the air, the ground, inside the homes...he captured it perfectly.

I can't agree with those who complain that it didn't give enough information---. It's one of those things that people don't talk about with outsiders....and there may even be concerns that to talk about it would cause harm in some way---either to them or the Selkies. The fact that he was able to glean as much info as he did is a tribute to the trust the people felt towards him.

I'm so thankful that he made this/these treck(s) and documented as much as he did---even though the tales were being lost even at that time.

There's a great scene in the movie Local Hero, where the scientest gal is either getting into or coming out of the water; at one point the camera passes across her feet and her toes are quite webbed. It's just a visual, nobody says anything or has any reaction to it and if one didn't have the Selkie background it wouldn't have made much sense.

An Unsuccessful Quest?.......2003-02-12

I have to say that I was disappointed with this book. It seems less about the legends about the selkie folk and more about what the author thinks he might feel about such legends---it feels removed, remote, uncommitted. If he was really on search for the truth behind the stories, he didn't seem to be searching very hard, and he didn't seem to share his results particularly successfully, and I never really felt touched by any sense of Celtic other-worldliness---and that's what I was hoping for and waiting for. The introduction by Seamus Heaney was, alas, the best part of the book...

selchies forever.......2001-08-29

I was fifteen when I first read this book, in 1967. I had never heard any of the Selchie legends, and I was completely enchanted by them, and by Thomson's writing. He doesn't just retell these tales; he finds those people who still tell them, and lets them speak for themselves. We hear about how they lived then, and how they live now, showing how beautiful some of the old ways were, and how sad their loss is. I have re-read it many times since and, as I get older, I find more in it that speaks to me. It should be impossible to feel nostalgia for something you have never experienced, but Thomson has managed to fill me with that emotion. I'm thrilled that it is back in print again (my copy is worn thin!) and that the celebrated poet Seamus Heaney has written the new foreword.

A wonderful glimpse into a different world.......2001-02-27

This is one of the most marvelous (in all senses of the word) reading experiences I've had in a long time. Thomson's book was originally published in the 1950's, but had fallen out of print and was resurrected through the efforts of Seamus Heaney, a friend of the author's who also provides a very helpful introduction. As a child, Thomson became fascinated by legends of seals who transform themselves into human beings (or vice versa), and in pursuit of this interest he traveled into remote areas of Scotland and Ireland where these legends were still part of the living folk tradition. But in the 1940's the tradition was dying out: the educational system pressured children to speak English rather than Gaelic, and listening to the radio had superseded traditional entertainments such as storytelling. Thomson's chapters depict a way of life that was already disappearing; he conveys not only the stories themselves but the entire "flavor" of the storytelling -- the people who tell them, the phraseology they use, their audiences, and the smoky cottages and fishy seaside shacks where the stories are told. His summary of the seal legends is fascinating, but the greatest pleasure of the book, for me, was its evocation of the world in which the legends arose. I can't recommend this book highly enough. (Suggested listening to accompany the final chapter: "The Song of the Seals" from Matt Molloy's album "Shadows on Stone.")

The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend

Average customer rating:

The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend
David Thomson
Manufacturer: Academy Chicago Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000P1UA1I

Average customer rating:

The people of the sea: A journey in search of the seal legend / David Thomson ;
David Thomson
Manufacturer: Granada
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007JFIEC

Average customer rating:

The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend

Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1402894147

Product Description

The late David Thomson, raised among Scottish fishermen and storytellers, was obsessed from childhood by the Celtic seal legend -- the large body of stories and songs about the "selchie," or gray Atlantic seal. In the early 1950s he took a journey to seek the legend out -- in the Hebrides, on the east coast of Scotland, on the west coast of Ireland, in the Shetlands and the Orkney Islands. He gives us here the fruit of his search as he found it -- in the pub, at a country dance, in a crofter's kitchen -- and something of the men, women, and children from whom he heard the stories. He also tells of his own encounters with seals, and the dream-like hold that these have had on him. The result is, in the words of his friend Seamus Heaney, "a poetic achievement," a work of "intuitive understanding, perfect grace, and perfect pitch."

Product Description

Book Description

No matter what your budget or whether it's your first trip or fifteenth, Fodor's Gold Guides get you where you want to go. In this completely up-to-date guide our experts who live in Florence, Tuscany, and Umbria give you the inside track, showing you all the things to see and do ? from must-see sights to off-the-beaten-path adventures, from shopping to outdoor fun. Fodor's Florence, Tuscany, Umbria shows you hundreds of hotel and restaurant choices in all price ranges ? from budget-friendly B&Bs to luxury hotels, from casual eateries to the hottest new restaurants, complete with thorough reviews showing what makes each place special. The Smart Travel Tips A to Z section helps you take care of the nitty gritty with essential local contacts and great advice ? from how to take your mountain bike with you to what to do in an emergency. Plus, web links and mix-and-match itineraries make planning a snap.

Customer Reviews:

You're going to LOVE ITALY! .......2004-09-24

I've been to Italy several times.....Rome, Venice, Florence, Bologna, Milan, some of the hill towns, etc. Here are my reviews of the best guides to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

Rick Steves' books are not recommended. They may be an interesting read but their helpfulness is very poor. They don't do well on updates, transportation details, or anything but the first-time-tourist routine and even that is somewhat superficial on anything but the mega-major sites.

Frommer's
These are time tested guides that pride themselves on being updated annually. Although I think the guides below provide information that is in more depth or more concise (depending on what the guide is known for), if your main concern is that the guide has very little old or outdated information, then this would be a good guide for you.

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the public transportation system. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.

Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Barely adequate.......2004-01-03

This book contains the bare basics one would need for a trip. It's somewhat outdated and isn't nearly as comprehensive as the Rough Guide for Tuscany and Umbria, which is a much, much better book. Had this been the only guidebook I had, my trip would have been much less enjoyable. Its information for towns in Tuscany and Umbria outside of Florence is minimal. For a much better trip, buy the Rough Guide instead.

Average customer rating:
Beastly Neighbors Rs: All About Wild Things in the City, or Why Earwigs Make Good Mothers (Brown Paper School Book)
Mollie Rights
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (Juv)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Biology | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
General | Biology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Biology | Biological Sciences | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Brown Paper School book: Blood and Guts (Brown Paper School Book)

Gee Wiz! How to Mix Art and Science or the Art of Thinking Scientifically (Brown Paper School Book)

The Book of Where: Or How to Be Naturally Geographic

Brown Paper School book: Math for Smarty Pants (Brown Paper School Book)

Good for Me!: All About Food in 32 Bites (A Brown Paper School Book)

ASIN: 0316745766

Average customer rating:
Beastly Neighbors: All About Wild Things in the City, or Why Earwigs Make Good Mothers
Mollie, Illustrated by Kim Solga Rights
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (Juv Pap)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OU22ZW

Book Description

The book provides an extensive discussion of asymptotic theory of M-estimators in the context of dynamic nonlinear models. The class of M-estimators contains least mean distance estimators (including maximum likelihood estimators) and generalized method of moments estimators. In addition to establishing the asymptotic properties of such estimators, the book provides a detailed discussion of the statistical and probabilistic tools necessary for such an analysis. The book also gives a careful treatment of estimators of asymptotic variance covariance matrices for dependent processes.

Amazon.com

"All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent."

Few writers have walked the line between farce and tragedy as nimbly as Evelyn Waugh, who employed the conventions of the comic novel to chip away at the already crumbling English class system. His 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust, is a sublime example of his bleak satirical style: a mordantly funny exposé of aristocratic decadence and ennui in England between the wars.

Tony Last is an aristocrat whose attachment to an ideal feudal past is so profound that he is blind to his wife Brenda's boredom with the stately rhythms of country life. While he earnestly plays the lord of the manor in his ghastly Victorian Gothic pile, she sets herself up in a London flat and pursues an affair with the social-climbing idler John Beaver. In the first half of the novel Waugh fearlessly anatomizes the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Everyone moves through an endless cycle of parties and country-house weekends, being scrupulously polite in public and utterly horrid in private. Sex is something one does to relieve the boredom, and Brenda's affair provides a welcome subject for conversation:

It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone.

Tony's indifference and Brenda's selfishness give their relationship a sort of equilibrium until tragedy forces them to face facts. The collapse of their relationship accelerates, and in the famous final section of the book Tony seeks solace in a foolhardy search for El Dorado, throwing himself on the mercy of a jungle only slightly more savage than the one he leaves behind in England. For all its biting wit, A Handful of Dust paints a bleak picture of the English upper classes, reaching beyond satire toward a very modern sense of despair. In Waugh's world, culture, breeding, and the trappings of civilization only provide more subtle means of destruction. --Simon Leake

Book Description

A HANDFUL OF DUST satirizes that stratum of English life where all the characters have money, but lack practically every other credential. Murderously urbane, it depicts the breakup of a marriage in the London gentry, where the errant wife suffers from terminal boredom and becomes enamored of a social parasite and professional lunch-goer.

The depravity and polished savagery of these characters offer an opportunity for Waugh's rapier wit and subtly to "show us fear in a handful of dust."

"Waugh's technique is relentless and razor-edged...by any standard it is super satire." (Chicago Daily News)

Customer Reviews:

Society Novel About Adultery.......2007-09-19

Evelyn Waugh's "A Handful of Dust," first published in 1934, was, of course, quite popular in its time, with both critics and readers. As a society novel about adultery, it was considered to be quite satiric and witty, and an accurate portrait of the vicious upper-crust London society between the twentieth century's two great wars (And so it seems to be.) The book has been described as the story of the 19th century fictional French character, Mme. Bovary, literature's most famous female adulterer, as rewritten by Noel Coward, one of twentieth century England's greatest society wits. However, these days, most people know Waugh, one of the outstanding twentieth century English novelists, only for his more mellow post-World War II "Brideshead Revisited," as filmed and frequently shown on public television -- if they know the author at all.

The title "A Handful of Dust," to begin with, is a quote from the lengthy poem "The Wasteland," by T.S. Eliot, famous Anglo-American poet of the early twentieth century. "Dust," the book, really only novella length at about 210 pages, concerns Lady Brenda and Tony Last, young couple. Tony is considered to be too involved with Hettam, his family home, then considered a hideous Victorian pile, and with trying to lead a proper Victorian lord of the manor life, to pay proper attention to the selfish Brenda and to realize she's bored silly. So she starts an affair with John Beaver, bounder, and soon enough seeks a divorce.

All sources agree that this book was Waugh's revenge on his first wife, who was then seeking a divorce. All sources, including the author, writing himself, in this book, further agree that, having got that far, he was at a loss for how to end it. So he incorporated a previously-published short story of some note, folding Tony into that action, and having this character, somewhat puzzlingly, going off to explore Brazil. The effect of this is that, for the relatively minor sin of inattention, the more sinned-against than sinning Tony meets what most of us would agree is an extremely sad end; whereas the author has Lady Brenda marrying Tony's wealthier, member of parliament (and thus generally resident in London) friend Jock Grant-Menzies, MP, thus appearing, at least, to have come out ahead. This was what Waugh intended: he wrote,"Fortune is the least capricious of deities, and arranges things on the just and rigid system that no one shall be very happy for very long." The author definitely did not believe in offering his audience any easy consolation.

Interestingly enough, the author had still to provide another ending for the American edition of this book: an American magazine had published, and owned the copyright on, the story he used to end the British edition. The alternative ending he came up with, also printed here, is much shorter than the other. It has Tony coming back unharmed from the foreign travel then expected of a divorcing man, to be met at the dock by Brenda, already regretting her adventure with Beaver. And Tony has begun to think of spicing up his life, much as Brenda had previously done. Either way, it's obvious that nobody really comes out ahead here.

Wodehouse meets Greene.......2007-08-18

This novel begins in fine comic form in a world that might come straight out of P. G. Wodehouse; it ends (more or less) in the jungles of British Guiana, in the world of Joseph Conrad or Graham Greene. The journey between one and the other is always interesting and often amusing, but it lacks internal logic. This is a book that its author began with total mastery, but did not quite know how to end.

The Wodehouse world is one of 1930s high society: luncheon and cocktail parties in town, weekend house-parties in the country. The "Bertie Wooster" character here, known as Beaver and deliberately vapid, basically waits around for invitations to make up the numbers at one of these gatherings. His club, Brats, might as well be Wodehouse's Drones. Due to an error, Beaver turns up alone one weekend at the ancestral home of Tony Last (a squire very much devoted to his house and village) and his wife Lady Brenda. Before long, Brenda and Beaver are in an affair, and the book truly begins.

The result, as William Boyd describes it in his excellent introduction to the Everyman edition (though NOT to be read before the book itself), is "MADAME BOVARY rewritten by Noel Coward." The comic tone persists almost all through the novel, and it includes many scenes that are hilariously funny (for example, the Vicar who recycles sermons first preached thirty years before in India without adjusting any of their topical details). But Waugh is less loving as a comedian, more satirical, more ruthless with his characters. About halfway through the book, something occurs that absolutely does not belong in a comedy. The jolt is shocking, but the truly horrible thing is that it hardly shakes the comic mechanisms at all. Despite occasional glimpses of true feeling, one thing continues to lead to another on the plot level, dictated more by circumstance than by character. There are still many funny moments, but one is conscious now of the author manipulating his people, less to let them grow than to pay them back.

And so to that ending in the Amazon jungle. The Everyman Library edition has the advantage of including the alternative ending that Waugh wrote for American serialization, since the short story that he remodeled as the final section of the British book had already appeared in America under a different publisher. This alternative is much shorter, and it is not entirely clear where it would have been grafted on, but in its acerbic brevity it is much more true to the prevailing tone of the book than the longer version. Brilliant though Waugh's Amazon conclusion is, it also seems arbitrary and willful. But in retrospect, so is the entire book, so is the nature of Waugh's comic genius. He may be a Wodehouse or a Coward -- superior to them even -- but he is no Greene and certainly no Flaubert.

A Very Good Book With A Very Bad Ending.......2007-07-23

The final section of A HANDFUL OF DUST feels as though it came from somewhere else, which apparently it did. This could have been such a fine book. As it stands, it is a disappointment of a novel best read as "how not to end a book." EW should have known better.

As Good As it Gets: Surreal, Amoral, Aristocratic Decadence .......2007-07-23

"And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du? "
The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 1922

Evelyn Waugh has given us a dark, witty, satirical novel that takes aim at the post World War I upper class society. His writing is biting and sharp and sometimes hilarious. Tony Last ( the last of the dwindling English gentry ) is smitten, smitten with his boring life at Hetton, his ancesteral, crumbling home. His fortune has dwindeled and there is not much left for his family. His wife whom he adores, Brenda, is smitten also, but not with Tony. She is bored and has found a lover, John Beaver (yes, Beaver). He is a sponger of life and of Brenda and ultimately , Tony. Brenda has rented a flat in London from John's mother- what goes around, comes around. She is smitten with the social life. Tony is unaware of any of the happenings- he trusts his beloved Brenda and is too busy with his life. Their son, John, is a slightly annoying pawn in this tragic comedy. Waugh has written a disaster of scathing proportions and the family such as it is, falls apart. None of these characters are in the least likeable. Not one could bring some semblance of order and honesty to this aristocratic crowd. There is wit, but with the humor comes a feeling of loss. Tony becomes his own person when he goes on a trip to the Amazon. That portion of the tale is interspersed with Brenda's social life in London. The ending is amazing and Dickensonian,if you get my drift.

"My novel also included a happier ending for an American audience, which doesn't surprise me at all. Go and read it and see if you are a tough Britisher or a wimpy Yank who would prefer some Canderel with their Waugh." Peter Walker

A most riveting novel, entertaining and sharp. One I shall remember for a long time to come.

Most Highly Recommended. prisrob 7-22-07

Waugh Abroad: The Collected Travel Writing (Everyman's Library)

Diaries of Evelyn Waugh

World Between the Wars Satired.......2007-07-19

The story of Lady Brenda and Mr. Tony Last in 1930's British society. A stinging satire of the upper class in the time between the two World Wars.

Average customer rating:

Another Plowden Delight
Each page is a whole chapter

A Handful of Dust: Disappearing America
David Plowden
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Landscape | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0393060330

Book Description

An elegy for our changing landscape by a master photographer.

Since making his earliest documentary photographs in the 1950s, David Plowden has honored those proud structures and places that America has discarded—from brawny commercial and industrial centers to small towns and farms. He reveres the honest work and spirit that built them. But the scene has changed much in the last five decades, and what's left of the honesty of small communities and the working of the land is all but gone, dealt a death blow by outsourcing, conglomerization, and our incessant drive to buy cheap at any cost. The America of these photographs is a bittersweet reminder of things once cherished and a life no longer possible. Deserted Main Streets and crumbling facades stare at us blindly. Abandoned houses and buildings reach back to ground. Plowden's work is a sad symphony—incomparably and irresistibly beautiful, while reminding us of our loss. 77 duotone photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Another Plowden Delight.......2007-10-04

David Plowden, in "A Handful of Dust: Disappearing America," continues his remarkable success in being one of the most significant, contemporary visual historians of America's fast disappearing past. His evocative images of marginal, often abandoned and disintegrating buildings and structures poignantly reminds us both of the transient nature of human endeavor and of the necessity of such endeavor in every age upon which society depends. In addition to providing grist for philosophical insights and musings, his meticulously composed images offer the viewer strong, black and white patterns and details that invite closer scrutiny and discovery.

Each page is a whole chapter.......2007-06-18

This is a gorgeous book. If a picture is normally worth a thousand words, Plowden's images are each whole chapters. They convey so much both by what they show and by what they leave out. Skillfully taken and carefully printed, they contain a sumptuous wealth of detail which forces the viewer to linger on each image and contemplate it. Plowden is an American master.

Average customer rating:

A Handful Of Dust
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KKJ2UY

A Handful of Dust (Penguin Modern Classics)

Average customer rating:

Excellent But a Bit Short

A Handful of Dust (Penguin Modern Classics)
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0141187468

Customer Reviews:

Excellent But a Bit Short.......2007-07-15

This is a very short novel that took about four hours to read. It was first published by British writer, Arthur Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966), in 1934. Waugh is best known for novels such as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust (the present novel), The Loved Ones, Brideshead Revisited, and the Sword of Honour trilogy.

The story is set in London and on a gentleman's farm outside of London. It involves a married couple in which the wife becomes restless. She drifts into an affair with unemployed young man who lives at home with his mother.

Overall, this is an excellent novel: well written, a compelling read, interesting, and it has a good story. The characters are excellent although the plot becomes a bit unrealistic at the end. I thought that the book was a bit short, and there could have been more character development and more details in the book. There is a feeling that the book is moving a bit too quickly towards the end. Otherwise it is fine.

This is a good 5 star read;the author shows traces of brilliance, but perhaps is short of being a masterpiece due to the flaws mentioned above: lack of character development, or emotions in the charcters, and an unrealistic ending.

Decline and fall ; [and], Black mischief ; [and], A handful of dust ; [and], Scoop ; [and], Put out more flags ; [and], Brideshead revisited

Average customer rating:

Decline and fall ; [and], Black mischief ; [and], A handful of dust ; [and], Scoop ; [and], Put out more flags ; [and], Brideshead revisited
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Heinemann : Secker and Warburg : Octopus Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Average customer rating:

Amazing resourcefulness in most extreme survival situation.

Fear in a handful of dust
John Ives
Manufacturer: Dutton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: 0525104208

Customer Reviews:

Amazing resourcefulness in most extreme survival situation........2000-06-11

27-year-old Calvin Duggai, found not guilty of five manslaughter charges by reason of criminal insanity, has been committed indefinitely to a Californian hospital for the criminally insane. A Navajo Indian, he had gone with five companions (one from another Indian tribe) into the Mohave Desert to look for brass shell casings ejected from Air Force planes during gunnery practice, and had driven out of the desert, stranding his companions there without water after a quarrel with the other Indian about whose witchcraft was stronger. Duggai had stranded them there to test whether the other Indian's magic could help them survive there.

The mental hospital is pure hell for Duggai, who feels even more degraded and humiliated in that environment than he would have in a prison. It is especially alien to him, as an Indian who is expert in living in wild country.

Five years after being committed, he manages to break out after being transferred to a lower-security facility - and he has one thought in his mind: to wreak vengeance on the four psychiatric witnesses at his trial whose testimony sent him to the hospital.

In accordance with a carefully laid-out plan, he steals a pickup truck with a camper mounted on the back, and in turn visits the residences of the four people concerned, bailing them up at gunpoint, binding their hands behind them with coathanger wire and herding them into the camper, where he secures them hand and foot to fixtures and gags them, and locks them in: there is not the slightest chance of them escaping.

Four prisoners, with obvious tensions simmering between them: Jay and Shirley Painter, whose marriage is falling apart; Sam Mackenzie (the main viewpoint character of the novel), half-Navajo and with an attraction for Shirley, which resulted in his wife committing suicide; and Earle Dana, the psychotherapist and writer whom the others regard as something of a quack, at whose dinner party things finally blew up between Jay and Shirley, which is what precipitated Audrey's suicide.

Duggai drives the four of them in their mobile prison cell deep into the desert, where he releases and unties them, strips them naked and leaves them completely without any provisions whatsoever. He drives off, having used his revolver as a club to break Earle Dana's leg, thus leaving him immobile; but occasional distant growls suggest that the pickup camper is not far off, and that Duggai wants to watch them die, like a vulture.

No-one could possibly survive in such a desert naked and totally without any equipment; but they manage to survive with very nearly nothing: their only tools to begin with are a folded plastic raincoat which Mackenzie managed to kick out the camper door as Duggai escorted him out, some brass ammunition shells he finds in the desert, which can be converted to knives, and Shirley's long hair, which has numerous uses. With this slender base, they manage to obtain ground water, using the raincoat to build a solar still, and to kill jackrabbits and lizards for food, whose body parts then give them further tools; and from there they make amazing achievements as they survive for day after day while working out what to do long-term.

Eventually Mackenzie and Jay decide to hike out to the nearest highway perhaps a hundred miles away, taking half the raincoat, and all the time trying to evade the watching Duggai with his gun at the ready. They seem well on the way to freedom when they are confronted by Duggai, put into the pickup camper, and taken right back to where they began and stripped of everything again, including the plastic - and it seems they have to start all over again. Mackenzie's hopes, as increasing weakness and delirium overtake him, of overpowering Duggai and having his own revenge seem more distant than ever....

The survival situation in the novel is probably the tightest I have ever read: four people, one with a broken leg, totally naked and without supplies (except for the couple of items they manage to scrounge) in an extremely harsh desert landscape described as "surrealist" - with a gunman hovering around who won't let them hike out. Surviving even a single day appears to be impossible; yet they survive amazingly long, and the novel shows great ingenuity in describing how they do this.

I have a couple of gripes about the novel. One is that the author gets the phases of the moon wrong: he describes a new sliver of moon rising early in the night, and later on standing overhead in the middle of the night. This is impossible: a thin sliver of moon has to be close to the sun (that's why you only see the small sliver), and therefore it can only be overhead in daylight, and can only be in the east either just before or just after dawn. Making it a nearly-full moon would have solved this problem, but would have made things too visible at night and caused problems with the plot, which at times relies on the near-invisibility of things by starlight only.

The other gripe is that the geography of the desert landscape is not clearly described, so I could hardly visualize it, and found it very difficult to follow some of the action, which relied strongly on the layout of things, especially when characters tried to navigate their way to a given destination without being seen by Duggai.

Other than these things, however, the novel is very clever and quite readable, and integrates well the tensions between the characters with the mounting urgency of their increasingly desperate struggle to remain alive.

My Pan paperback copy of this novel is simply called "Fear", but research on the Internet shows it to be the same book. "John Ives" is a pseudonym for Brian Garfield, and the book was reissued in 1985 under his own name.

Average customer rating:
Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall
Waugh
Manufacturer: Dell Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 9991188606

Average customer rating:
3 PBs by Evelyn Waugh: Loved One, Handful of Dust, Put Out More Flags
Evelyn Waugh
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SSNLFU

Product Description

Med Sz PBs

Boxed Set. Scoop, Decline and Fall, Put Out More Flags, Black Mischief, Handful of Dust, Vile Bodies, The Loved One

Average customer rating:

Boxed Set. Scoop, Decline and Fall, Put Out More Flags, Black Mischief, Handful of Dust, Vile Bodies, The Loved One
Evelyn Waugh
Manufacturer: Little Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JJL2ZY

Decline And Fall, Black Mischief, A Handful Of Dust, Scoop, Put Out More Flags, Brideshead Revisited -

Average customer rating:

Decline And Fall, Black Mischief, A Handful Of Dust, Scoop, Put Out More Flags, Brideshead Revisited -
Evelyn Waugh -
Manufacturer: Heinemann Publishing -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PSKMQY

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books