Traversa, a postscript

On the cover of Fran Sandham's "ˇTraversa" there is the somewhat non-commital endorsement from The Guardian reading "I found myself increasingly gripped". Since publishing this and fishing around for what others thought of the book I found the Guardian review it came from - interesting reading, and a pointed comment on how marketing latches onto a snippet and does what it can... I'm currently reading Mazower's book on Salonica, and its cover features a quote from a somewhat non-commital Jan Morris review, I like Jan Morris, I'm enjoying Mazower, I'm sure my purchasing decision was uninfluenced, but nonetheless it's fascinating to see how 'documents' about documents are created.

People always say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Should we respin this to say don't judge a review by the pullquote used on a cover? Or is that descending too far into a meta-narrative?

Across Africa by Foot

"Traversa", Fran Sandham 

Often when I've left a job the parting gifts provided by colleagues serve to indicate that while you may well have spent a long time in proximity with these people, they haven't really worked out who you are. It was thus with some real pleasure, after almost a year in the library of a financial institution I was seen off with a copy of Fran Sandham's "Traversa", the sort of gift that carried with it a sense that real thought had gone into it, and which was very much appreciated.

The central premise of a lone walk from West to East coasts of Africa in the footprints of Stanley and Livingstone carries with it a certain quantity of baggage. One anticipates reading of an earnest, driven and somehow unattainable person undertaking a feat of endurance and adventure that few of us could aspire to. 

There's a time and a place for intimidating tales like that, I've read and loved Paddy Leigh Fermor, Rebecca West, and Adrian Seligman and felt a little bit in awe of what they've achieved. Similarly there's a time and place for "Traversa".

Walking across Africa, as "Traversa" makes clear, is not something to be undertaken lightly, okay it's not the journey into the unknown experienced by Livingstone, but mentions of places such as Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Strip and a brief mention in the first chapter when Sandham plans his route recall the long conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 1990s and early 21st century, sometime referred to as Africa's Great War. Sandham's periodic concerns about landmines remind the reader that not so long ago this undertaking would be undertaken only by lunatics.

"Traversa" is imbued with a rich sense of humour; featuring sclerotic Afrikaners, recalcitrant donkeys, and amorous backpackers "Traversa" reassures the less intrepid that epic adventure is not beyond us. Indeed there is some genuinely useful advice for those of us who are not quite as ruggedly capable as a Ranulph Fiennes, including the priceless gem that when in a treehouse take care to not urinate on the head of a fierce dog. 

Any journey like this will reveal that Africa is not affluent, and that concepts of poverty and hardship that we apply in the developed world have a completely different meaning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sandham doesn't make this the focus of his work, but makes clear that there is little romance to poverty, and the reality of existence can be nasty, brutish, and short. There is also the challenge that a lot of tourism doesn't necessarily help, and the reality that motivations for some, in particular an older American with "a keen eye for young girls" encountered by Lake Malawi, may not be the most wholesome.

Works like these are inherently autobiographical, as much about the author as the journey; in this light there is often a temptation to see them as voyages of personal discovery, in the process witnessing the author undergoing some form of catharsis of self realisation or mid-life crisis. Sandham, for that all his motivations for his traversa stem from a dissatisfaction with a life defined by commuting from Wimbledon to Waterloo, escapes this. Fleeting moments of wistful introspection - perhaps best encapsulated by an encounter with a beautiful girl in Livingstone which ends with him walking her to a bus stop and knowing he will never see her again - serve to illustrate, but not define the work. Reading "Traversa" is not an insight into a troubled soul, it is much more akin to a genial friend's recollections.

It's not a long book, and like many such works, the real pleasure is in the early game, when there's more discovery to be had, but it's a highly enjoyable read that bears taking some time over. You have fun reading it, and by the end of the process you feel edified. I'm not sure you can really ask for much more from a book?

"The Assassin", Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

There's a certain serendipity to this. A couple of weeks ago, sitting at Gatwick waiting to board a flight east to Tbilisi, I was struck by the sort of mild panic that the onset of the Kindle has hugely eased. Fretting that none of the packed books or downloaded JSTOR articles would quite be enough to keep me entertained for the week, a quick ferret yielded a pair of Clive Cussler books, guilty pleasures perhaps, but reassuring knowing that whatever else, I was unlikely to be stuck abroad with nothing entertaining to read.

As luck would have it, both Cusslers went unread on the road, Kate Mosse's "Citadel" providing all the leisure reading needed, and it was only once returned, driven by the exigencies of crowded trains, that attention moved to Cussler and Scott's "The Assassin". As I've blogged before, I've got history with both, the two, amongst others, providing much of the escapism my teenage self sought. I've grown up, and they still know their market. The Isaac Bell series, of which this is the 8th, are straightforwardly written and don't contain too much in the way of surprises. Part of me wants them to be richer and deeper novels, but the realist in me is pleased that this combination of easy access, good storytelling, and engaging surroundings exists, and serves in a small part to locate the early 20th century in the minds of readers and may encourage them to think more widely about the world of this period.

Back to serendipity though. "The Assassin" deals with Standard Oil and the personality of Nelson Rockefeller, and the middle section of the book takes place in the Caucasus, then and now a booming oil rich region. Baku in the throes of the 1905 revolution provides a dramatic backdrop to one of the significant set pieces, and leads Bell, Rockefeller, and sundry other protagonists struggling to escape west. A wry smile was thus evoked when around page 270 they reach Tbilisi. Often the appearance of exotic or obscure parts of the world set in the past offer scope for an author to indulge in creative licence, so there was a huge level of pleasure on my part to be able to recognise the view of old and new Tbilisi from Mtatsminda park and the funicular railway providing a route down to the city.

The view of Tbilisi seen by Bell from Mtatsminda, 110 years on.

I shouldn't have been surprised. One of the hallmarks of Justin Scott's work has always been a keen attention to historical detail, but it's something oft overlooked. It doesn't cost the author much to get it right, and it's so pleasing to see it as well executed as it is here.

An effective sense of place aside, "The Assassin" romps along in an effective way. It's not high literature, and when read carefully there's not much that will really surprise, but most importantly it entertains and mainly edifies. There's a time and a place for the erudite and thought provoking, but so is there time for this. Maybe it didn't need to save my reading life when in parts foreign, but it made the commute through South London a good deal more pleasurable.

As I've said before, more of the same please.

"Citadel", Kate Mosse

Some books require the right time and place to be read. Having wholly enjoyed the first two of Kate Mosse's Cathar trilogy there was a lot of enthusiasm when "Citadel" came out in the run up to Christmas 2012; I honestly believed it would be a book that occupied hours through the Christmas break when respite from the barrage of family that the season invariably involves was needed.

This didn't happen.

Instead "Citadel" has been sitting in a magazine box beside an armchair in the sitting room pretty much since then. A couple of abortive attempts to start it went nowhere, and when heading off on travels eastwards last week, picking up "Citadel" was accompanied by a tacit bargain that if it returned from Georgia unread then it would go to a new home and I'd file a level of wonder at why it had failed to grasp me in the way the previous novels had.

Maybe it's because I've been thinking about the Languedoc recently, idly thinking about Cathar castles (and yes, I know, most of these post-date the Cathar period) and pondering whether an Albigensian crusade of my own was a feasible road trip, but this time "Citadel" gripped. I tried to think at what point I bulldozed my way through whatever the previous sticking point in the novel had been, but to be honest I was considerably past it by the time it became a serious consideration, and by that time I had identified sufficiently with the characters and been engaged by the plot to not really worry about why previously the book hadn't worked.

Taking a similar twin narrative approach to the previous two volumes, the focus of the book is Carcassonne and the Languedoc between 1942 and 1944, covering the period of German occupation and French collaboration and resistance. It's not a particularly pretty piece of history, and Mosse doesn't shy away from making clear the level of atrocity perpetrated and the way in which communities tore themselves apart. While there are still the notes of magic realism that ran through "Labyrinth" and "Seplulchre", this time it feels somehow darker. Here the good guys don't always win, and in sending this message it makes "Citadel" a useful text when thinking about post-1940 France.

It's probably reliant on you being in the right frame of mind, and wanting to put yourself in the Languedoc in a dark time more readily recognisable than that of the early 13th century, but "Citadel" does reward and serves to make you think in a way that marks it out as rewarding literature.

Maybe I will find some time to head to the deep south of France this year.

"Ferries Across the Humber", Kirk Martin

If you’ve ever been out of an evening on the north bank of the Thames near Charing Cross station you may well already be familiar with the Tatershall Castle. Known affectionately as “The Belgrano” by the MoD staff whose office is just across the road, it’s something of an institution, a floating bar often a convenient place to meet, but one suspects that few if any of its patrons give much of a thought about where she came from.

In this lavishly illustrated and engagingly personal account Kirk Martin sheds light not just on the origin of the Tatershall Castle, one of the last steam powered paddle steamers in service in the UK, but traces the history of Humber crossings from the earliest times (citing archaeological of the trade across the river by the Parisii and Coritani tribes and the Roman 'transitus maximus' between Lincoln and York) to the opening of the Humber Bridge, which brought ferry traffic to an end.

Central to the narrative, the Humber is portrayed as a complicated river, wide, with an extensive network of sandbanks, affected by tides and the vagaries of the weather, put simply, it is a "treacherous stretch of water, with mists and fogs that blot out everything and make the trip three miles of anxious hooting and peering from the bridge" (p.75) and groundings were frequent. Compounding this, in the early 20th century facilities for passengers were austere, New Holland pier is described as being "far more miserable to look at than Hedon Road Gaol" and the ships were little better, the "so called passenger steamer ... more like a farmyard than a passenger boat" (p.65).

In this context the arrival of the three "Castle" ships in the 1930s brought in new levels comfort and an ability to deal with the new demands placed by increasing car traffic. Spared war service due to the strategic importance of the trans-Humber trade the Castles were in use until the end of ferry services in the early 1970s, their longevity being partly explained by a lack of enthusiasm for investment in new ferries due to the shadow of bridge construction hanging over the route.

If Martin's account spurs you go and look for the Tatershall Castle and you're worried because you can't spot it on the Embankment worry not - as of early 2015 she's been taken off for a refit, fittingly being carried out in Hull.

Disclosure: a review copy of this book was supplied by Pen and Sword Books.

"The Missing and the Dead", Stuart MacBride

"And it's the same people, day after day, shift after shift. All the time, the same manky minks, with their filthy houses and smelly clothes and drug habits. Or drink. Or both. Never mind the nutters."

It maybe takes a while to work out, but Stuart MacBride's latest Logan McRae novel is a tale of purgatory and redemption. Exiled from Aberdeen CID to uniformed policing in the wilds of Banff he finds himself in a countryside prone to the law enforcement challenges of escaped livestock, petty shoplifting, and murdered children. 

With the changes to Scottish policing meaning that every real opportunity to regain his position is frustrated by the arrival of Major Incident Teams and a usual dose of abysmal fate being chucked in his face, this could so easily be another predictable episode in the increasingly dark oeuvre of Stuart MacBride.

Except it really isn't that at all.

The early McRae novels were undeniably violent and not to everyone's taste, but there was a certain joi de vivre to them, which progressively was stripped way to the point where 2011's Shatter the Bones felt as though MacBride and McRae were entering into a very nihilistic spiral towards a bleak place that didn't offer much in the way of hope or light.

"The Missing and the Dead" bucks this trend. Sure, there are moments of real unpleasantness, but the humour persists throughout, and there's a real level of justice running through the text. It almost reverses the concept of tragedy, in that there are places were good things happen for the worst of reasons. McRae is nowhere, but he manages to deliver, and along the way there's even the hint that good things might happen to his life.

As I ran towards the final third of the book there was a feeling in the back of my mind that inevitably MacBride would throw something into the works to strip away the predominantly cheerful feel of the book. The end isn't all sweetness and light, but it's a long way from the shell shock that can permeate finishing other MacBride books.

McRae feels redeemed by "The Missing and the Dead". While I've shied away from revisiting some of its immediate predecessors I can see myself picking this up again, and who knows, it might even qualify for a place as an audiobook on a roadtrip.

"Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete", Paddy Leigh Fermor

I'm often a touch skeptical about posthumous books, too often it results in something roughly stitched together and better left unseen. Thus, while there was some excitement on my part when, in late 2014, to great fanfare Leigh Fermor's account of his abduction of General Kreipe in Crete during 1994 was published, it was tinged with a few reservations. Indeed, on several occasions it was lifted from a bookshop's shelves, only to be returned as flicking through it seemed to confirm some of my reticence. The Christmas break however sufficiently eroded my resolve to get it over the threshold.

"Abducting a General" covers the oft recounted tale of Leigh Fermor's wartime exploits on Crete, aired en passant during his travelogue of walking to Constantinople in the 1930s, getting its spell on the big screen in "Ill Met by Moonlight", and now receiving a posthumous volume to itself.

Leigh Fermor left enough of a manuscript to work with, and it carries his inimitable style and voice, but problems do however emerge at times - for example there are points where personalities are introduced without context, and there are the occasional jarring awkward sentences, the sort of thing a good relationship between author and editor would readily fix, sadly impossible here.

As might be expected, there is a strong sense of place to the work, with wartime Crete vividly represented, along with a level of wry acceptance of war's casual brutality, in a way that is perhaps most reminiscent of Fitzroy Maclean's "Eastern Approaches". What makes this poignant, is that so much of the war in the Eastern Mediterranean portrays it as something of a backwater, somewhat far removed from the main location of decision in Russia, the North Atlantic, or in France. In this light the efforts made, and the price paid in this theatre carry with them a sense of mild futility. Did Kreipe's abduction do anything to materially shorten the war? Or was it an enterprising stunt successful largely in rousing the ire of the occupying German army, with significant consequences for the population of Crete? It is always a mistake to apply the morals of today to a previous time, but somehow the realisation that ultimately the events recounted by Leigh Fermor amounted to little more than an expensive footnote cast a pall over what reads as an old school wartime adventure story along the lines of "The Guns of Navarone".

I have a huge amount of affection for Paddy Leigh Fermor's writing, and because of this I worry a touch that many may have their first encounter with it through the means of "Abducting a General", thanks to the initially appealing subject matter, and the level of promotion that publishers John Murray succeeded in bringing to bear. It's certainly a lot less intimidating to pick up than, for example, "A Time of Gifts", but it's ultimately also somewhat less rewarding for all that. Maybe there's a good reason this is a posthumous account rather than the story Leigh Fermor himself would like to be remembered for?