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Book Reviews
Excerpts:
Kite Strings of the Southern Cross
by Laurie Gough
1999 Travelers’ Tales, 400 pages
reviewed by Karen Sherman
There is a certain breed of traveler for whom returning to a place is the ultimate fantasy – returning to a place where we’d put down roots for the briefest of time and which took hold of our sensibilities, offering the promise of being more home than home itself, if only we’d go back. But how many of us ever do? While the desire might never disappear, the urgency tends to diminish, clouded by subsequent memories, subdued by the temptation of destinations as yet unexplored, mitigated by fear that the magic we remember, magnified by time and distance, will evaporate upon our return.
Can we go back? Laurie Gough, author of Kite Strings of the Southern Cross, was brave enough to try, and her return to the small Fijian island she remembered as paradise provides a framework for her eloquent collection of travel memories. . . .
Smouldering Incense, Hammered Brass
by Heather Burles
1999 Turnstone Press, 190 pages
reviewed by Michele Jin
A 37-year-old woman quits her computer programming job in Vancouver, Canada and buys a one-way ticket to Damascus, intending to stay in the Middle East on her own for as long as she can. It is a bold move that any wanderlust-afflicted woman might admire, and it seems such a journey would provide fodder for a fabulous travelogue. But Heather Burles’ account of her Syrian interlude doesn’t quite hit the mark.
In her new book Smouldering Incense, Hammered Brass, Burles presents her four-month stay in Syria as a series of vignettes – short, often sketchy chapters, each focusing on one subject or event. Some of these snapshots vividly capture the author’s surroundings. A chapter titled “No Dogs in Damascus” assaults the senses with the sights, smells and sounds of Damascus’ fauna – cocks, donkeys, horses, camel, sheep. “I Wish” powerfully evokes the sense of helplessness and shame many travelers feel when confronted with the extreme poverty that plagues the city streets of less-developed nations.
And some of the best chapters are those that detail encounters between the author and the various Syrian women and families she comes to know. “Ululations” is a sweet little tale of a lesson in vocal gymnastics: “Offa taught me how to fling my voice into the heavens, to wait with an open throat for the moment of purity when angels descend and the gods decree a celebration of silence. The feathers of angels. Ululations and silence.” . . .
But while many of its chapters are enticing, the book as a whole seems a bit disjointed. It lacks the sort of narrative drive that pulls a reader in and compels her to keep turning the pages . . .
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