"Sunrise" by Tea Obreht

 

Three stories, joined in a sandwich structure, so that 'An incident over Horsebone Lake' is split into two parts and arranged first and last, 'An incident at Burnt Creek on the occasion of a homecoming' is split into two parts and arranged 2nd and 4th, and 'An incident at the cabin bar outside the town of Salt Draw' is, in its entirety, in the middle. This arrangement reminded me of similar arrangement of the stories in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell except that where they are linked by theme, the stories in Obreht's book are linked by taking place in the town of Sunrise, and by the author of a book about the main character in the 2nd (and 4th) story; a tape used for her research being more or less in the centre of the book. 

And there is a very neat twist in the end. And another in the last couple of pages.

In terms of style, tone, or genre, it is a bit of a portmanteau. The first (and last) story is about Nina trying to survive after falling from a plane into a lake in the wilderness. The second (and fourth) story is about a legendary gunslinger returning to the town where he became famous. And the middle story is about the director of the annual theatrical event in memory of the gunslinger. 

All the stories are told from the 3rd person limited PoV of the protagonist. The outside story is told in the present tense, the others in the past tense. Each of the plots made me want to read to the end: the plane crash story because the protagonist was battling for her life against the wilderness, the western story to solve the mystery of his the protagonist died, and the central story because I wanted to understand how these three apparently unrelated narratives fitted. 

The central characters were all well developed. Nina, the plane crash survivor, is as stressed and disorganised as anyone would be in similar circumstances ... even if they made it to the beach. Anton Vargas, the notorious gunslinger returning old and terminally ill to the town that turned him into a dime-novel hero, is perhaps too tough to be true. But Coll, the local historian, who isn't quite brave enough to stand up to a local delinquent with a dismembered wolf, is the embodiment of conflict between what we all wish we would do and the lesser reality. 

This is a novel about truth and myth making. There are also doses of fantasy. Anton's badger dream is significant to the plot, but to what extent is Nina's sighting of Ben a hallucination? As for the dreadful wolf disease which seems to be able to pick and choose its victims ...

Fundamentally, it was well-written and well-told and I enjoyed reading it. But I'm not sure it compares with the best in these genres. For a story about a horse-riding posse trying to survive in the mountains, I preferred Pity the Beast by Robin Maclean.

Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife won the 2011 Women's Prize for Fiction

Selected quotes: 

• “She's fighting the chaos of the moment, the sense that she's been teleported into this cold horror.” (An incident over Horsebone Lake #1, day 1)
• “Only a magpie soundlessly spearing worms out of the ground.” (An incident over Horsebone Lake #1 day 3)
• “The impulse to signal for intrusion with yet another ‘hello’ doesn't quite override her terror of receiving a response. What would she actually do if something said ‘hello’ back? It wouldn't be a living thing. She knows that.” (An incident over Horsebone Lake #1, day 3)
• “Her whole life has come down to the mathematics of loss.” (An incident over Horsebone Lake #1, day 3)
• “If Nina had ever laid eyes on Death, she would have taken his hand right away. She wouldn't have hung on for a night under the rubble, like her mother had. She had no fight in her at all.” (An incident over Horsebone Lake #1, day 4)
• “It was still quite dark, but he could see the serration of distant mountains taking on the first pink of dawn. In a few days, Preacher would tell him this was called alpenglow.” (An incident at Burnt Creek on the occasion of a homecoming #1)
• “Gum-cudding.” (An incident at the cabin bar outside the town of Salt Draw)
• “A dress so yellow his beleaguered brain smelled lemons when he saw it.” (An incident at the cabin bar outside the town of Salt Draw)
• “Bobby's whole face was straining with thought.” (An incident at the cabin bar outside the town of Salt Draw)
• “Every sinner on the torchlit lawn before him, even the white-haired men leaning on canes, had more time in his hourglass then did Vargas.” (An incident at Burnt Creek on the occasion of a homecoming #2)
• “He didn't even like the spring. Didn't long for it. Found no comfort, as other people did, in the smell of last year's rotted leaves emerging. Why was he suddenly on the verge of tears at the thought of not seeing it again?” (An incident at Burnt Creek on the occasion of a homecoming #2)
• “The pain ... had a tendency to make him feel the full measure of every moment.” (An incident at Burnt Creek on the occasion of a homecoming #1)

October 2026; 320 pages

Published in 2026 by Random House in the USA and Weidenfield & Nicolson in the UK.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Wager" by David Grann

 

A gripping true story of shipwreck and its aftermath set during the 1740s.

In 1740 a squadron of eight Royal Navy ships led by Commodore George Anson set off to attack Spanish shipping during the War of Jenkin's Ear. The plan was to cross the Atlantic, go round Cape Horn into the Pacific, and capture the Spanish treasure ship somewhere near the Philippines. Almost immediately, disease (including scurvy) began to deplete the crew. The seas at Cape Horn were atrocious: two ships turned back. HMS Wager, captained by David Cheap, rounded the Horn but turned north to early and was wrecked off the coast of Chile. The survivors were stuck on a island and began to starve. They began to split into factions. One group, under the command of the gunner, built a boat and sailed through the Straits of Magellan to the coast of Brazil from where they eventually made it back to England. The captain and some officers were rescued by native Americans and some of them also returned, even later, to England. Once back home, accusations of mutiny and counter-accusations of murder were made and best-selling books published to justify points of view.

The rest of Anson's expedition were eventually reduced to a single ship with a skeleton crew; nevertheless, they successfully captured the Spanish treasure galleon and completed the circumnavigation of the globe to return home.

This is not so much a tale of derring do and heroic survival against all odds as a chronicle of what can happen when men are in extremis: there is mutiny and murder, theft of supplies, tyranny and rebellion. It's like a real-life version of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Above all there is death, repeated death, usually from sickness. The ship had a complement of 120 men when it left England; ten returned (of Anson's command, 188 out of 1854 survived). As with Grann's previous history also set in South America, The Lost City of Z, I wondered why anyone who had any choice would embark on a voyage when death from drowning, exposure, disease, starvation and enemy action were all more likely than survival. 

One of the naval officers was the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron who refers to his grand-dad's exploits in his poetry. In his subsequent career (yes, he went back to sea!) he achieved notoriety as a  commander who always seemed to attract dreadful storms and received the nickname 'Foul Weather Jack'. 

It's a ripping yarn. The history is thoroughly researched and well-explained; the well-written story keeps you reading to the end. I read it in two days.

There was one error I noted. When discussing naval slang, the author repeats the oft-repeated assertion that the phrase 'piping hot' derives from the fact that a pipe was sounded to call the crew to meals. This seems unlikely given that Chaucer uses the phrase in Canterbury Tales, published in the 14th Century, two centuries before Henry VIII founded the Royal Navy. 

Selected quotes:

• "A diplomat later quipped that Anson was so unknowing about the world that he'd been 'round it, but never in it'." (Ch 1)
• "When ailing seamen were shielded belowdecks from the adverse elements outside, they were said to be 'under the weather'" (Ch 3)
• "To keep warm they [the Native American Kawesqar who wore almost no clothing despite the chilly climate] oiled their skin with insulating seal blubber." (Ch 11)

Also by David Grann:

• The Devil and Sherlock Holmes

Links to my reviews of other travel and exploration books may be found by clicking here.

March 2025; 257 pages

• First published in 2023 in the US by Doubleday
• My Simon and Schuster paperback edition was issued in the UK in 2024

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George

 Sam Gribley runs away from his overcrowded apartment in New York to live off the land in the Catskill Mountains. 

There are distinct echoes of Robinson Crusoe. 

This is the ultimate boy's own adventure (written by a woman). Sam survives by eating plants and trapping animals and digging for mussels and catching fish; he makes fire, his own clothes and a shelter. He befriends weasels and raccoons and trains a falcon. But the hardest challenge is, perhaps, to live on his own.

The joy of the book is the way the narrative is peppered with little notes, as if they are diary entries, many of which gives clear practical tips about how to stay alive in the wilderness, so that the reader is persuaded that it might be possible for a kid to run away and live off the land. It's a clever artifice, like footnotes giving verisimilitude. 

This reminded me of Swallows and Amazons which feels like an adventure story but is grounded in a huge amount of technical detail about sailing.

I noted that the narrative starts at a moment of great drama, when Sam is snowed in at winter, and only after this prologue does the linear narrative begin.

A great story but I doubt I'll read the sequel(s). Because this story is unique.

This review was written by 
the author of Motherdarling