One Man Caravan

by Robert Edison Fulton Jr.

““Oh no,” I replied. “I’m going around the world on a motorcycle.””

At a dinner party in London, in 1932, Robert Edison Fulton Junior had just been asked when he was planning to sail back to America.

“Who was the more startled, the seven persons around me or myself, I really can’t say. I recall only that the moment I let that statement slip, I knew I’d done something inexplicably peculiar.”

Of course it might never have happened at all but for the fact that one of the other dinner guests was none other than Kenton Redgrave who had just purchased the Douglas Motor Works and offered Fulton a free motorcycle upon which to take the trip.

And thus began an eighteen-month round the world odyssey on a modified, 6 horsepower, Douglas twin, in 1932.

Fulton travelled through 22 countries, including some of the most inhospitable (then and now). He rode through Iraq (Irak, as it was spelled), Afghanistan, Waziristan, India, China, and many others. He crossed mountains, and deserts. He dealt with idiotic border regulations (and guards) and spent some time in jails. But throughout his trip he was, for the most part, able to connect with the local populace and surprisingly survived even the most potentially dangerous situations relatively unscathed. His descriptions of local customs and his attempts to communicate, usually with no common language, are often quite funny and insightful.

I really enjoyed this book, both for the experience of being able to vicariously share Fulton’s trip, but also because many of his observations of the tribal culture of much of the Middle East is no different today – some 80 years later.

So for anyone looking to add to their motorcycle travel library, this is one I would recommend.

BLACKWATER: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

By: Jeremy Scahill

I used to think that the use of mercenaries, or guns for hire, was limited to the distant past and sub-Saharan Africa. I naively expected that western democracies would not hire people who are essentially thugs with guns to do their dirty work, except perhaps in the shadowy intelligence world of black ops.

For me that all changed with the killings of four American ‘contractors’ in Faluja in March 2004. The deaths would have gone relatively unnoticed but for the way in which these men’s bodies were subsequently mutilated and put on display for the world’s television cameras. Then people started asking just who these contractors were and what they were doing in Iraq in the first place. And slowly, bit by bit, the story of Blackwater (the company for which these four men worked) started to come out.

This book covers that occurrence in detail (including Blackwater’s subsequent politically-assisted efforts to silence the families of the men killed who were seeking answers and justice). It also recounts the Nisgour Square shootings in September 2007 where a small group of Blackwater mercenaries reportedly shot and killed16 Iraqi civilians, “without provocation” according to witnesses, and “with no enemy activity involved”  according to a US Army report.

This is all presented in the context of how George W. Bush’s war machine, fuelled as it was by sometimes equal portions of God, greed and gusto, lay down the welcome mat to Keith Prince’s private army and others.  Prince, the founder and CEO of Blackwater, comes from a deeply religious background which opened doors to the highest levels of power within the Bush administration. And once in, Blackwater continued to work those levers of power to operate in theater with impunity, subject to neither the Uniform Code of Military Conduct (UCMJ) or the laws of Iraq, all the while fostering closer and tighter relationships through lobbying and the hiring of ex-government officials from extremely senior and sensitive positions within the administration.

At their peak, private contractors (mercenaries) actually outnumbered US military personnel on the ground in Iraq.  But then, realizing the war (and its lucrative profit margins) wouldn’t go on forever, Blackwater and others set their sights on domestic markets, with Hurricane Katrina providing the impetus to deploy stateside: “[Blackwater] beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene as 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans.” So now we have guns for hire patrolling a major US city, a law unto themselves, with no clear mandate or chain of command to a higher authority – the very definition of vigilantism.

The book is a real eye-opener, albeit a disturbing one. Recommended.

(Note to Canadian readers: Lest you think this is a US issue, news out of Ottawa today (Feb 7, 2011) claims that Canada has paid $41 million to security companies (i.e. mercenaries) in Afghanistan over the past 4 years.)

Shop Class as Soulcraft

by Matthew B. Crawford.

Although most of my professional career was spent being what is euphemistically referred to as a “knowledge worker”, I have long held a great admiration for top-notch trades people, and have always had hands-on hobbies such as vehicle mechanics and cabinet making. And when I say top-notch I’m not talking about the robotic mechanic who simply replaces parts in accordance with the shop manual based on a wild-assed guess of what the problem might be or the readout from a $50,000 diagnostic instrument, but rather the “professional” tradesman who still has the ability to get the feel of a machine, understand what’s happening, and be able to affect repairs in the most timely, effective, and inexpensive manner. In other words, a thinker and problem solver.

I can thank my father for that. As a heavy equipment mechanic in a backwoods lumber operation in the 50s and 60s, he was one of the most creative mechanical problem solvers I have ever known. There was always a way, and given the scarcity and expense of parts and the frequent remoteness of the broken machine, that way more often than not would have made MacGyver proud. His was a hard act to follow, and I consider myself lucky to have picked up maybe as much as 50% of his skill in that arena. So nothing gets me more riled than a so-called mechanic who clearly doesn’t know if he’s been bored, punched, or countersunk. Or makes me happier than dealing with one who clearly knows what he’s about, what I’m about, and most importantly, what my particular piece of machinery is about.

Sadly, the former seem to be quickly outnumbering the latter as any young person today with a good head on his or her shoulders is automatically pushed into the academic stream so they too can become just one more knowledge worker occupying a cubicle somewhere for the next 40 years, contributing lots to the corporation’s bottom line, but precious little to society at large (and I know whereof I speak). Truth is, some of those very sharp minds would be happiest with greasy hands and black fingernails if we only gave them the opportunity and encouragement early enough to foster the joy of working with their hands. To do otherwise is just a waste.

And while I used the example of a mechanic, the same applies to any of the trades. I have an acquaintance who is an extremely accomplished cabinet maker who has given up on trying to grow his business because he can’t find young people who share his passion for creativity and hands-on work. Similarly our house builder was always struggling to find trades people who wanted to build the “best” house as opposed to “a” house. And the list can go on and on.

So all that was a very long, rambling preamble to this book I just picked up. What first caught my eye was the photo of a very cool vintage BMW on the front cover. Then the title, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work, hooked me.

From the overleaf: “Based on his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford makes a case for the intrinsic satisfactions and cognitive challenges of manual work. The work of builders and mechanics is secure; it cannot be outsourced, and it cannot be made obsolete.”

The author is a motorcycle mechanic specialising in vintage bikes, but he didn’t start as that. He started with a PhD in political philosophy and a senior executive position with a Washington think tank. That lasted all of 5 months before he quit to open his bike shop.

It’s not an easy read (I blame his PhD for the fact the book has a fog index of approximately 14), but Crawford hits right at the core of something that is becoming a huge problem. I found myself repeatedly nodding in agreement or, to my wife’s chagrin, reading out chapter and verse accompanied by a “that’s what I’ve been saying all along” and getting the requisite “Yes dear” in response.

It’s not for everybody, but if you’ve ever considered the relative values of manual work versus brain work, Crawford very effectively challenges the conventional wisdom that working with one’s hands is somehow a lesser calling.

Highly recommended.

13 Things That Don’t Make Sense

by Michael Brooks

Writing about science for non-scientific readers poses its own particular challenges but for the most part Brooks has quite successfully met those challenges with his entertaining and very interesting exploration of 13 areas where science is still unable to come to an understanding of how, or why things work the way they do.

The subtitle, “The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time” may be overstating it a bit, but the 13 areas Brooks picked certainly cover a wide range of scientific exploration and theory ranging from the “missing” universe to a discussion on homeopathy. In between he discusses the challenges faced by scientists as they try to explain death, life, sex and a variety of other scientific conundrums.

On life, Brooks says that we are clearly “more than just a bag of chemicals”, but what is the “more”? No chemical in our bodies does not exist elsewhere in other living or non-living things. And even though we can assemble all the ingredients, we are unable to create, or even explain, life. We just don’t know the recipe.

Sexual reproduction is, according to Brooks, one of the least effective ways in which living things can reproduce. Asexual reproduction is more effective, efficient, and does a better job of sustaining the species that practice it. So why did we evolve the way we have and reproduce the way we do (aside from the obvious fun factor)?

One of the most interesting segments in my opinion was the discussion about free will. Free will is often seen as a cornerstone of our humanness, but some research has brought that whole concept into question. Normally we think, then act – I think I’ll move my hand, and then I execute the movement. Pretty straightforward, right? Except that it doesn’t seem to work that way. Subjects wired up to various brain scanners have shown that the brain is already starting the action needed to move the hand before the subject becomes consciously aware of his intent to move his hand. In other words, the brain activity is preceding the conscious thought process. So does conscious thought cause the brain to act? Or is it the other way around? Much to think about here for sure.

This is a book to be read slowly. The concepts, while expressed in layman’s terms, can still be quite complex, requiring a degree of attention and focus one can’t normally get reading in bed and falling asleep mid-page. But it is certainly worth the effort to read, and read again.

Recommended.

Note: You can also check it out at www.13thingsthatdontmakesense.com.

A Long Long Way

By Sebastian Barry.

Willie Dunne is an 18-year-old Dubliner who joins up in 1914 and spends the next 4 years simply trying to survive the horrors and brutality of the Western Front.

Back home on leave Willie is confronted by the growing tensions and riots over Irish independence and the role his father, a Dublin policeman, has had to play to quell the riots. An injudicious remark drives a wedge into their relationship that preys on Willie’s mind when he’s back at the front.

And the young woman with whom Willie is deeply, madly in love seems either unable or unwilling to reciprocate in kind leaving Willie to question her commitment and their future together when the war is over.

Barry seamlessly weaves the three storylines into a compelling narrative, a story of courage, duty, honour and love.  It is also brutally descriptive. Whether it’s the first gas attacks at St. Julian in 1915,  the blowing up of Messines Ridge in 1917, or the countless battles and encounters in between, Barry brings the horrors of the front to life so that the reader becomes not so much an observer as a participant, one of Willie Dunne’s mates in the trenches or out in no-mans land. And we share Willie’s confusion, anger, and frustration over his relationship with his father and with Gretta as he tries to understand what is going wrong while enduring yet another tour at the front, standing waist deep in bloody water or waiting for the shelling to stop before going over the top one more time.

Willie despairs of ever going home for good.

“The war would never be over. He had come out for poor Belgium and to protect his three sisters. The tally-sticks of death s would be cut from the saplings for ever more. The generals would count the dead men and mark their victories and defeats and send out more men, more men. For ever more.”

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, this book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys the genre of Great War narratives. Highly recommended.

TAR SANDS

By Andrew Nikiforuk.

In Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Andrew Nikiforuk documents Canada’s and Alberta’s rapid and continuing descent into becoming just another failing petro-state. Clearly both levels of government would argue with the use of the term ‘descent’, but what else could you call it when the exploitation of the tar sands confers Canadian membership in a club that includes such bastions of democracy and human rights as Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Angola, among others.

From Alberta’s absence of accountability and failure to implement a reasonable royalty regime (currently among the lowest in the world), to the environmental time bomb represented by the tailings ponds (presently covering 23 square miles at an average height of 270 feet above the forest floor), Nikiforuk shines a much needed light into many very dark corners.

In this well researched indictment, Nikiforuk also provides some sobering insights.

• On the economics of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) Nikiforuk quotes University of Manitoba professor and energy expert Vaclav Smil. “CCS, he argues, is part of the same thinking that gave us the energy spectacle of “a 50-kg female driving a 3,000-kg SUV in order to pick up a 1-kg carton of milk.””
• On the tailing ponds he says, “Within a decade the ponds will cover an area of 85 square miles. Experts now say it might take a thousand years for the clay in the dirty water to settle out.”
• On using natural gas to separate oil from bitumen he quotes one Albertan who recently observed: “Using natural gas to develop oil sands is like using caviar as a fertilizer to grow turnips.”
• And On The First Law of Petropolitics he gives us this: “New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman unveiled the law in a 2006 issue of Foreign Policy Review, and it goes like this: the price of oil and the quality of freedom invariably travel in opposite  directions. As the price of crude oil climbs higher in an oil-dominated country, poor or rich, secular or Muslim, that country’s citizens will, over time, experience less free speech, declining freedom of the press, and a steady erosion of the rule of law.”

If you are concerned at all about Canadian politics, Alberta politics, or the environment, this book is a must-read.

Highly recommended.

Old Man on a Bike

By Simon Gandolfi.

“Why would a reasonably sane man in his seventies ride the length of Hispanic America on a small motorcycle – a man who is overweight, suffered two minor heart attacks and has a bad back? Stupidity comes to mind…”.  Thus begins Old Man on a Bike, the story of Simon Gandolfi’s epic solo motorcycle trip from Mexico to the tip of South America. 

Gandolfi buys a small 125 cc Honda (a pizza delivery bike) in Veracruz Mexico, and sets out on his 6-month journey, crossing 13 countries and 22,000 kilometres. He has not ridden a motorcycle in a great many years. He is alone. He has a bad heart. But he has a goal – Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego.

Old Man on a Bike is first and foremost a travelogue; the motorcycle simply a means of transportation, a source of periodic humour, and a cause of crises of varying degrees. Gandolfi covers the trip on a day-by-day basis, recounting his experiences as a series of vignettes as he discovers new towns and villages, meets new people of many cultures and stations in life (he speaks fluent Spanish which makes this easier than it would be otherwise), and deals with all the trials and tribulations of a long road trip – including breaking his false teeth on more than one occasion and running out of heart medication.

While the diary format is appropriate, I found Gandolfi’s writing style to be such that I got the sense I was experiencing the trip whilst looking through a soda straw – getting but a very narrow perspective frequently lacking in context. Nonetheless, his ability to engage with the local populace did provide some of the more interesting parts of the book as well as giving the reader a basic understanding of the people and the environments in which they live, and through which he travelled.

Gandolfi makes no secret of his politics or his views on current world events such as the Iraq war and at times it seemed Gandolfi was using the book as his personal soapbox. Whether one agrees with his views or not, I just found the injection of politics to be an unnecessary irritant that contributed nothing to the story of his travels. It is a minor flaw to be sure, but still it bothered me enough to warrant a comment in this review.

So bottom line? I would offer a qualified recommendation for this book. Is it a requisite item for inclusion in any motorcycling library? Not really. But as the story of one man’s voyage, it’s an interesting read and one can’t but admire Gandolfi’s courage for undertaking such a trip at his stage in life.

The Ghost Road

By Pat Barker.

The Ghost Road is the third book in Pat Barker’s First World War Regeneration Trilogy, following Regeneration, and The Eye in the Door.

The Ghost Road picks up the story in the closing days of the war as Dr. Rivers tries to make sense of what has happened and obsesses over whether he has actually helped any of the war wounded in his care. He has done his job, but is sending men who are “cured” back to France to face almost certain further injury or death morally justified? Reminiscences of his childhood and his experiences with the primitive head-hunting tribes of Micronesia provide further insight into his character.

Two of the patients in his care, Billy Prior and the poet Wilfred Owen are among those who go back to the front. Prior has an option to stay in  England but chooses, in fact feels compelled, to return. The details of their last few days of the war at the front are chilling indeed as they try to survive even as talk of an armistice is heavy in the air.

A winner of the 1995 Booker Prize, this book is very good – not quite as good as Regeneration, in my opinion, but a worthy read nonetheless. Furthermore, the reader would be best advised to read the trilogy in sequence, otherwise much of the context and some of the character development would be missed.

Recommended.

Passchendaele

By Paul Gross.

Passchendaele was one of the major battles of The Great War (WW I), one in which the Canadians played a key role.

By all accounts Passchendaele was a bloody affair that became synonymous with the misery and sheer brutality of WW I trench warfare. From Wikipedia:

“More than any other battle, Passchendaele has come to symbolise the horrific nature of the great battles of the First World War.

In terms of the dead, the Germans lost approximately 260,000 men, while the British Empire forces lost about 300,000, including approximately 36,500 Australians, 3,596 New Zealanders and some 16,000 Canadians from 1915 to 1917. 90,000 British and Dominion bodies were never identified, and 42,000 never recovered. Aerial photography showed 1,000,000 shell holes in 1 square mile (2.56 km²).”

It’s against this horrific backdrop that Gross presents the reader with what is, at its core, a love story.

And although it’s a good story, the book suffers from the fact that is was produced from the original movie screenplay. While a screenplay is written such that character development, situational context, etc., can often be provided or enhanced through visual means, a  novel does not have that option and must rely on the written word and turn of phrase to truly engage the reader. And this is where the book failed, in my opinion. While the translation was a decent effort, the book lacked the literary punch one should expect from a well-written novel with such rich and powerful subject matter.

With all its faults, Passchendaele is an “okay” read, but certainly not in the ranks of great WW I novels (eg. Birdsong, Three Day Road, Regeneration).  If you want to read it, pick it up at the library if you can. And while I have yet to see the movie, I expect it will be much more enjoyable than the book. 

Zen and Now

By Mark Richardson

Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a road story with a twist.

From the cover liner:

“Richardson … was struck by [Zen and The Art’s] portrayal of Pirsig’s complex relationship with Chris and struck by the timelessness of its lessons.

So Richardson tuned up his old Suzuki dirt bike and became a “Pirsig pilgrim””.

Richardson neatly blends his own experiences on this trip with those of Pirsig some 36 years earlier. He follows the same route, visits the same places, and meets many of the same people that Pirsig encountered. And in the process comes to better understand himself, the Pirsigs, and Zen and the Art.

But Richardson takes it beyond a simple road story with his extensive research into the lives of the Pirsigs beyond what we learn in Zen and the Art.  The murder of Chris in San Francisco, the marital breakup, the relationship with the other son, Tom, all combine to add an interesting third dimension to Zen and Now.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for something deeply philosophical, read Pirsig’s second book, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. But if you want a book that will keep you turning the pages and perhaps trigger an impulse to become a Pirsig pilgrim yourself, Zen and Now is a worthwhile addition to your motorcycling library.

When walking, just walk.
When sitting, just sit.
Above all, don’t wobble.

One Percenter

By Dave Nichols.

One Percenter is probably the most poorly written book I’ve ever read, which is too bad because there is the potential of a decent book in amongst all the whining about misunderstood and universally picked on bikers (“You couldn’t even ride your scoot down to the corner store for a pack of smokes without getting pulled over for any number of bullshit violations.” ), the RICO Act (“Welcome to America, land of the free...as long as you don’t ride a motorcycle that is.”), and frequent plugs for Easyriders magazine (of which he is the editor) and Harley-Davidson.

Clearly he has a pretty good handle on the history of the one percenter, and his observations on such diverse topics as rubbies (rich, urban bikers) and the reality TV custom bike building world (OCC, Biker Build-off) are interesting. But Nichols is all over the motorcycling map providing a brief history of piracy, talking at length about biker films good and bad, dissing the Hamsters (“Rolex riders”) while providing the reader with the complete bylaws of The Weasels (apparently an Easyriders creation), and ending with a pitch for environmental responsibility. And except for a multi-page rant on the RICO Act he glosses over (ignores?) the entire subject of the descent of motorcycle clubs from “good natured drinking clubs with motorcycle problems” to the modern day criminal enterprise that some clubs have become – or perhaps that’s just because his 10-page list of every American motorcycle company since 1903 needed the space.

One Percenter is desperately in need of a good editor. The quality of the writing is awful (“servicemen who fought ... in the muddy trenches during World War II”?) and as indicated above, the book lacks any kind of focus other than anything to do with motorcycles. As published, it reads like a stream of consciousness as Nichols bounces from one topic to another, often in mid-paragraph, only to come back around to the same point pages or sometimes even chapters later. To call it a jumble is being charitable.

You wouldn’t miss much by not reading this book at all, but if you are someone who needs to read every motorcycle book you can get your hands on, wait a month or two and save your money. One Percenter is destined for a very short shelf life and should be in the bargain bin for a buck or two well before the riding season begins.

Through Black Spruce

By Joseph Boyden

Through Black Spruce is a beautifully-written and tightly wound story of a Cree family from Moose Factory, Ontario. It is a contemporary tale of intrigue and violence, terror and beauty, loves lost and love found, but most of all, the family and the strength of the ties that bind it together.

Will Bird is in a coma from which the doctors think he will never emerge. Annie is his adult niece who visits him in the hospital daily, talking to him, holding his hand, refusing to let Will give up.

The story comes out in pieces as Boyden alternately takes us inside Will’s head as he lays comatose, and then to Annie who initially struggles to find something to say to her uncle and then increasingly uses their long, one-sided talks as an opportunity to put voice to her own life.

What emerges is a picture of a family beset by more than their share of troubles, but also a family that has held together with faith and determination. And woven throughout is a rich portrayal of life in Canada’s north, on the ‘wrong’ side of the Moose River.

Boyden strikes a fine balance in the telling. Despair and hopelessness is countered with optimism and liberal doses of wry humour – an elder living on the streets of Toronto hosts goose cookouts under the Gardiner, and has an e-mail address; a drinking buddy declines to take up jogging, saying, “I thought about it, but my truck’s running fine, so I don’t see the point.” His characters are alive, and his descriptions of life – whether alone on a trap line in the northern woods, or living on the streets of Toronto – draw the reader in, until it seems they become part of one’s own experience, not simply written words on the page.

This is a fine novel and a great read. Highly recommended.

Riding on the Edge

By John Hall.

“Sure we got into some shootings and serious shit. But most of it was just good, clean fun, like drinking beer all night and standing up on the seat of your motorcycle, drunk and without a helmet, at three o’clock in the morning, while you blew every red light on Hempstead Turnpike.”


I suppose one could debate whether that is an apt description of “good, clean fun”, but what I found quite interesting about this book was that Hall describes a 1960’s outlaw scene that was totally devoid of any criminal activity of a serious nature – no drug dealing, no trafficking, no prostitution – just “good, clean fun”. And so I suspect that there’s either a lot Hall left out of the narrative or there’s quite a bit of revisionist history being presented here.

But while Hall may have been selective in his recollections, Riding on the Edge still opens a window on the outlaw culture at the time and the early days of the Pagans as they began their march to become, according to the book’s jacket, “the most violent criminal organization in America”.

The story line is pretty typical and quite repetitive – getting drunk, taking offense, trashing bars, screwing underaged groupies, internal power struggles, who’s righteous and who isn’t. Reading about all that is good clean fun in its own way but what really differentiates this book from others of the same ilk are Hall’s periodic detours into the history of the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Mennonites and the Brotherhood of Zion, observations on Polish family traditions, and so on. Finding these gems scattered among the wreckage of yet another trashed bar or run-in with the authorities is what makes the book readable and kept me turning the pages (I read it in 2 days). It’s still not great literature, but it’s a decent, entertaining read.

Oh, and one last nit to pick: the inside cover says, “In the 1960s, John Hall, a Harley-riding hell-raiser hooked up with the Pagans...”. According to the book, Hall rode a 1963 Triumph TR-6.

Riding with Rilke

By Ted Bishop.

Ted Bishop is an English professor at the University of Alberta. He is also an avid motorcyclist. So when an opportunity presents itself to combine both his passions, he leaps at the chance, and the result is quite an amazing tale.

At first I wasn't too sure how the motorcycle/university research pairing would work, but Bishop pulls it off and delivers a very good read indeed. Part travelogue, part literary research project, part passion for motorcycling, this book has it all.

From the portrayal of his (real life) accident to the narrative on how he developed his obsession with Ducati’s, the story has a feel of authenticity to it – been there, done that, got the t-shirt – and long-time riders will be able to relate with (mostly) fond recollection to Bishop's insights and humour. His brother’s instructions on how to bump-start a Ducati 250 cc Mach 1 took me back a lot of years (“You put it in gear, hold in the clutch, and push it. When you get running you hop on it side-saddle and let the clutch out at the same time, then hop off and keep running. It’ll catch, and then you pull the clutch back in and rev the throttle.”). And his descriptions of the feel of a truly 'great' motorcycle as you throw it through the curves and twisties of your favourite off-the-beaten-path riding roads are right on the mark. As for the agony of bad-weather riding – Bishop’s narrative had me shivering from the remembrance of water dribbling down the back of my neck on rides taken 30 years ago.

Interesting and well-written, Riding with Rilke deserves a place in any motorcycling library – right between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Long Way Round.

The Eye in the Door

By Pat Barker.

The Eye in The Door is the second book of Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy. Whereas Regeneration focused on the relationship between Dr. William Rivers and Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart, this book deals with life on the home front in 1918 and the relationships between one soldier, an intelligence officer, and the various conscientious objectors, war resisters, and homosexuals he comes into contact with in London as part of his duties.

But that soldier, Billy Prior, was also not left unscathed by his time at the front. After a breakdown, he was removed from active combat duties and underwent several months of therapy at Craiglockhart. When ‘cured’ he was attached to the Department of Munitions in their Intelligence Division. It’s during his tenure there that we see him begin to break down emotionally and psychologically. Eventually he is forced to consult with the one man who had helped him previously – Dr. Rivers.

One tends to assume that the war effort was universally supported in England – how else to explain the continued recruitment of young men to throw into the meat grinder of the Western Front – but there was an active and organised resistance to the war in England at the time. The Eye in the Door offers an interesting glimpse of that world and with a narrative that is both compelling and disturbing, Barker delivers a fascinating read that offers one more perspective on The Great War and how it changed a generation.

At The Sharp End

By Tim Cook.

Volume One of a two-volume set, At The Sharp End is the compelling story of the Canadian Corps in the first two years of The Great War. From the first significant Canadian engagement in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1916 and on to the charnel house they called the Somme some 18 months later, Cook has taken the harrowing experiences of the infantrymen – those at the sharp end – and has woven them into a gripping, almost page-turning, narrative. And I say ‘almost’ only because his descriptions of life at the front are so powerful and the narrative so intense that the reader, like the front-line troops themselves, periodically has to withdraw to decompress and catch one’s breath.

The Western Front during the early years of The Great War was a brutal place to be. Life expectancy was often measured in days and hours. Friends and comrades were wounded, killed, and oftentimes simply disappeared in a “red mist” during the continued shelling that took place 24 hours a day along much of the front. Cook takes these facts and intertwines them with the battlefield history of major engagements, attacks, counter-attacks, and strategy, never losing sight of the terrible human cost.

Books – both fiction and non-fiction – describing the horrors of the front are not uncommon but what makes Cook’s account so forceful is that he has extensively researched and liberally uses excerpts from war diaries (actually forbidden, but fortunately for historians many men kept them anyway) and letters home. It is these entries and letters that constantly bring the reader back to the fact that these were real men, with wives and lovers and parents, who were thrust into this maelstrom and who tried to fight the good fight. Some survived, many didn’t.

The letters themselves were surprisingly blunt, especially considering they were going home to worried family members and friends an ocean removed from the carnage – John N. Beaton wrote to his father of the first German gas attack of the war: “It was the poisonous gases that killed a lot of our poor fellows. They did not have a chance to fight.” And some were perversely poetic with the imagery leaving nothing to the imagination – Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson wrote of The Somme: “When [the shells] struck, the ground looked like Resurrection Day with the dead elbowing their way into daylight and forcing the earth from their eyes.” One cannot read a line like that and simply dismiss it without emotion.

In addition to the letters and diaries, Cook includes facts and other details about the war in general and specific battles themselves that are not easily distilled from the more academic, if I can use that term, analyses of the war. For example, Cook reports that “an estimated 100 million 18-pounder shells were fired by the British and Dominion forces during the war – the equivalent of 44 shells, per second, every second of the day, for the duration of the 1,561 days of the war.” That’s simply an astonishing number, especially when one considers that’s the output from only one specific calibre of gun, in support of one army, on one side of the war. And if that doesn’t adequately describe the sheer mass of artillery fire that rained down on the troops at the front consider this, during the 5-month battle in 1916 “... parts of the Somme were subjected to more than 1,000 shells per square metre.” One square metre – just about the size of the chair I sat in while reading this book.

Heavily researched and well written, At The Sharp End is an excellent read for the serious military history scholar as well as for someone like myself who has an abiding interest in The Great War but more from the viewpoint of the men and women who were there. It’s an important addition to any World War I library, and I can’t wait to get to get my hands on Volume Two.

The Great Karoo

By Fred Stenson

When I first picked up The Great Karoo I was anticipating a novel comparable to Three Day Road (Boyden), another story of Canadians at war. However unlike Three Day Road (which I would have read in one sitting if the need for food and sleep hadn’t interrupted), I found The Great Karoo to be a bit of a struggle.

The Great Karoo is primarily a story of Western Canadians fighting in the Boer War. The story line follows Frank Adams, a cowboy from Alberta who signs up with the Canadian Mounted Rifles, through training, across the ocean to South Africa, crossing the Great Karoo Desert, and into the thick of the fighting.

Frank is certainly not the best soldier Canada ever produced, but he manages to survive, and through the lens of his experience we see the war, its conduct, and the relationships these men develop with each other, their horses, and even, in some cases, the enemy.

I found the book interesting from an historical perspective as I learned a few things about the Boer War I didn’t know before. But surprisingly, for all the rich potential of the story, I found the tone of the book to be confusing, and even somewhat impassionate. The Great Karoo couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a war story, a story about the relationships between these Westerners, a story about South Africa, or a love story. The seeds were there – bits of all four were scattered about – but they never germinated into the fulsome, engaging tale of adventure, war, and personal experiences I was expecting. Consequently I developed no emotional attachment to the story or any of the characters – historical or fictional. Frankly by the end of the book it mattered not one whit to me who survived and who didn’t; I just didn’t care enough for any of the characters to celebrate their safe return or mourn their loss.

It took me a long time to read The Great Karoo as I could only read 5-10 pages at a time before something more interesting would attract my attention. That perhaps was partly the reason I couldn’t get “into” it - a bit of chicken and egg here – I didn’t commit the time to become consumed by the story, and I wasn't consumed by the story so didn’t expend the time and effort. So it could just be me and the head space I was in when reading this book, but I’m not so sure....

Is it “A truly magnificent novel” as David Adams Richards enthuses on the cover? Not in my opinion. It’s an interesting read and worth the effort if you are curious about the role of Canadians in the Boer War, but it’s certainly not a page-turner, and surely not “a deeply satisfying novel” as claimed on the overleaf.

Jupiter's Travels

By Ted Simon.

Jupiter’s Travels is one of those books that no motorcycle library should be without. Especially now that Boorman and McGregor’s epic motorcycle journeys, supposedly inspired by Ted Simon, have become so popular. In short, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in the genre.

Having said that, I must admit the anticipation far outstripped the reality of this book for me. For whatever reason I was just not able to really connect with Simon and his experiences. While he relates funny moments, moments (actually, days) of sheer terror, and everything in between, I found myself reading about them as a dispassionate observer – not really engaging beyond reading the words on the page. It’s almost as if Simon, who frequently talks about his feelings and the emotional impacts of his experiences as he journeys around the world, was afraid to really expose them to us through his writing in case they somehow lose potency for him personally.

However the reader does get a reasonable sense of what it was like in those far-off lands in the early 70’s as Simon – always exposed and vulnerable, just him and his Triumph motorcycle – makes his way around the world. He describes spectacular scenery, horrid road conditions, his relationship with his motorcycle, and the people, always the people. With few exceptions, complete strangers, initially just curious, become helpful and ultimately very friendly and supportive. (Having travelled North America by motorcycle extensively during the 1970’s, I can say his experiences in that regard were no different than those I had here in Canada and the US. Strangers would approach just to talk, offer assistance, or go totally out of their way to help. Quite a wonderful experience, and one that I have never duplicated while travelling by car.)

After nearly four years on the road and having travelled through Africa, America, Australia, India and points in between, Simon, not surprisingly, starts to lose interest in his journey. He senses the end is near and becomes consumed with his ‘homecoming’. In his rush to get back to England he finds himself “ ...moving mechanically through the landscape, undeviating, incurious...”. Interestingly, the exact phrase that I, had I his writing ability, might have used about the last 150 or so pages of this book.

So is it worth reading? Yes, if you are a fan of motorcycle road stories, and want to see what the fuss was all about. But it is certainly no page-turner.

In the Hot Zone - One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars

By Kevin Sites

I finished this book about a month ago but have put off writing a review because, quite honestly, I wasn’t too sure how to communicate my somewhat conflicted thoughts on the book.

First, let me get the basics out of the way.

Kevin Sites is an award-winning photojournalist hired by Yahoo! News as their first Internet correspondent. His job: To spend a year traveling to, and reporting from, twenty hot spots around the world. The objective was not to provide more of the same-old crisis reporting that we see every day on the television news, but rather to try to get behind the scenes and shine some light on the human side of these tragedies so that the rest of us can, perhaps, gain a little better understanding of how the people themselves survive such horrific conditions.

This he does very well. In fact he does it so well, that I found the horror and misery sometimes a bit much to take in one sitting and so had to put the book down just to get a mental break.

Whether he’s talking about how rape is used as a weapon in the Congo, or interviewing a surprisingly forgiving young Israeli woman maimed by a suicide bomber, Sites manages to treat his subjects with humanity and compassion, and tells their stories in a simple, straightforward way that I found, on occasion, disarming. He clearly feels very deeply for these people and it shows in his writing.

It is very powerful.

As a snapshot of the very real human impacts of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’, it’s one of the best books I have read in a long time. And it should be necessary reading for every student of current history or political science if for no other reason than to clearly illustrate the results of failed wars and failed foreign policies.

But here’s my problem with the book – it’s simply too intense. The stories are, each and every one, compelling, but the fact that he has but a few pages to allocate to each means that he was unable to give us much more than the broadest brush of their experience, focussed, naturally enough, on the worst that mankind inflicts on others of different races/tribes/religions. Long before I was ready, Sites had already started reporting from yet another war zone, and I was left wanting to know much, much more about the people to whom I had just been introduced, their lives, their hopes and dreams.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is this was a great book, but it would be an even better 3 or 4 books!

Absolutely worth a read.

Shantaram

By Gregory David Roberts

I think The Seattle Times reviewer nailed it: “Shantaram is a true epic. It is a huge, messy, over-the-top, irresistible shaggy-dog story.”

Shantaram is based on Roberts’ own personal history and his love of the city where he spent most of his fugitive years during the 1980s and where he now lives and works.

We meet the protagonist, Lindsay, when he arrives, for the first time, in Bombay. From then on, we follow his voyage of discovery of the city and its people. We see the city through his eyes. We smell it through his nose. We experience it through his life. In many ways, this is as much a story about Bombay as it is about Lindsay himself, and in the end, I think, every reader will also come to love Bombay at some level, although few would presume to have the attachment for it that Roberts so clearly has.

Lindsay’s journey really starts with Prabaker, a freelance Bombay guide who insinuates himself into his life by grabbing his bags as Lindsay exits the airport shuttle bus in downtown Bombay. A fast and enduring friendship is born from that chance meeting and it is Prabaker who introduces Lindsay (and the reader) to his city, his world. Lindsay, in response, embraces the city and the people and comes to know and love them both.

From living in the slums to consorting with prostitutes, freedom fighters and the Bombay mafia, Lindsay becomes part of the warp and weave of Bombay life, and Bombay becomes part of him: “Everyone in the whole world ... was Indian in at least one past life.”

In the beginning, when Lindsay is still somewhat in awe of the city, the book has a lightness and underlying sense of discovery and humour that offsets some of the misery and poverty that he encounters in his travels. To a large degree, that is due to the fact that Prabaker is still a major presence and influence in his life and in many ways continues in his role as Lindsay’s guide. However as Lindsay becomes more and more involved in the Bombay mafia, and with Prabaker’s untimely and accidental death, the story loses that sense of joy and wonderment and becomes progressively darker. Lindsay’s life becomes bleaker and more desperate, and it’s only periodically that we get to see flashes of the humanitarian Lindsay who set up and ran the medical clinic in the slum, or who marvelled at the resilience and joy to be found among even the most desperate of Bombay’s impoverished millions.

A great, rambling tale, Shantaram grabbed me from the very first page and kept me up well past my bedtime on more than one occasion. Highly recommended.