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Turtle Diary
The turtles in London Zoo become the mutual obsession of two lonely strangers who dream of setting free the turtles and themselves. Detail by detail their diaries record a world in which thought leads to action and action brings William G. and Neaera H. to their own open sea.
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First published March 20, 1975
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About the author
Russell Hoban
184 books414 followersRussell Conwell Hoban was an American expatriate writer. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. He lived in London, England, from 1969 until his death. (Wikipedia)
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July 5, 2021
We always forget that our planet is our home and behave like predators…
There are some books that can accommodate much more than the number of their pages may suggest, and Turtle Diary is one of those.
Turtle Diary is a tale of loneliness and isolation:
Turtle Diary is a tale of the heritage the nature had left to man:
Turtle Diary is a tale of man:
Turtle Diary is a tale of man’s place in the world.
Bless the turtles and loners…
They won’t stop killing the whales. They make dog- and cat-food out of them, face creams, lipstick. They kill the whales to feed the dogs so the dogs can shit on the pavement and the people can walk in it. A kind of natural cycle.
There are some books that can accommodate much more than the number of their pages may suggest, and Turtle Diary is one of those.
Turtle Diary is a tale of loneliness and isolation:
When I opened the door to my flat it was like opening a box of stale time. Old time, dead time. The windows were all closed, the place was quite airless.
Turtle Diary is a tale of the heritage the nature had left to man:
There was a box with a slot. A few feet away were a souvenir stand and a shop full of pottery things and coppery things and sea-urchin lamps with light bulbs in them shining through the sea-urchins. I put no money in the box. Polperro seemed to me like a streetwalker asking for money to maintain her virginity.
Turtle Diary is a tale of man:
The range of human types and actions is not terribly wide. I have seen the same face on a titled lady and a barmaid. And there seem to be only a few things to do with life, in various combinations. I could not have accepted the idea of myself as a stereotype when I was young but I can now.
Turtle Diary is a tale of man’s place in the world.
Bless the turtles and loners…
June 21, 2013
Review published in 3:AM Magazine: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/turtle...
It would be understandable to expect Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary to be a light-hearted romantic comedy, one where two lonely protagonists come together over a crazy caper, a plan to set free the sea turtles in the London Zoo, fall in love, and live happily ever after. Fortunately, Hoban’s 1975 novel bears little resemblance to this simplistic narrative. Instead, Turtle Diary is a quiet, thoughtful examination of the loneliness of middle age and the quest to break free of it. William G. is divorced, 45, living alone in a small flat. He is estranged from his ex-wife and his two daughters, works in a bookshop and searches for ways to fill his empty hours. Neaera H., a writer and illustrator of children’s books, is single, 43, living a solitary life in which she works late into the night, and goes days without talking to another person. They both seek solace in visits to the London Zoo, where they independently arrive at the same plan: to set free three large sea turtles that are confined in a small area in the zoo’s aquarium. After meeting in William’s bookshop over books about turtles, they eventually share their “turtle thoughts” with each other, and embark on a plan to set the turtles free off the coast of Polperro, Cornwall. Turtle Diary explores both the turtles’ significance as symbols of a different way to live, and William and Neaera’s respective struggles to reshape their lives. This is a novel that focuses not so much on William and Neaera’s freeing the turtles, as on their attempts to free themselves.
The novel’s structure provides rich opportunities to get to know both characters’ thoughts and fears, as its chapters are alternating diary entries written by each character. Hoban creates internal monologues that weave together observations of settings, recollections of interactions with others, philosophical musings, passages from novels and poems, memories, and the minutiae of daily tasks. Both William and Neaera are frozen by fear of being hurt. Although they are lonely, they veer from contact with others. And their loneliness bears the weight of time lost with little to show for it. As William notes,
I used to think when I shaved and looked at my face that that bit of time didn’t count, was just the time in between things. Now I think it’s the time that counts most. It’s those times that all the other times are in between. It’s the time when nothing helps and the great heavy boot of the past is planted squarely in your back and showing you forward. Sometimes my mind gives me a flash of road I’ll never see again, sometimes a face that’s gone, gone. Moments like grains of sand but the beach is empty. Millions of moments in forty-five years. Letters in boxes, photos in drawers.
For both William and Neaera, sea turtles represent a different way to live. No regrets, no hesitation, no existential struggles. Throughout their diary entries, William and Neaera marvel at the sea turtles’ uncanny ability to navigate through thousands of miles, swimming through ocean currents to Ascension Island to breed. The turtles live by instincts, and their actions embody what they are. As Neaera notes, “[The turtles] were compacted of finding, finding was embodied in them.” In one passage, William jumps from his speculations about shamans to this reflection about the sea turtles,
Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding? Swimming with Pangaea printed on my brain and bones, the ancient continent that was before the land masses drifted apart. That’s part of it too: there were no seas between, the land was one, there was one thing, unbroken. Now there are thousands of miles of open water and the strong ones, the swimmers, the unlost, are driven to trace the paths between, maintain the ancient connection. I don’t know whether I can keep going. A turtle doesn’t have to decide every morning whether to keep on bothering, it just carries on. Maybe that’s why man kills everything: envy.
William and Neaera cringe to see the turtles and other animals caged at the zoo, yet another example of humans’ callousness. Throughout the novel, animals are juxtaposed with humans. Animals represent a kind of integrity, an ability to live in the moment and to act without agonizing over potential dangers. In one passage, Neaera considers the behavior of the wading birds at the zoo:
The birds were all quite good-natured and reasonable about it, they seemed more grown-up than the Zoo management, as if they’d been caught and caged not because they weren’t clever enough to avoid it but because they simply didn’t think in terms of nets and cages, those were things for cunning children. So here they all were, interned for none of them knew how long. They made the best of it, better than people would have done I think, and all of them appeared to get on rather neatly together…. I felt dissatisfied, as one does when morally strong preconceptions have to be questioned. The birds were not silent prisoners wasting away like Dr. Manette in the Bastille nor were they beating pitiful wings against the wire mesh of their captivity. Their understanding of the whole thing seemed deeper and simpler than mine.
William describes the gibbons as “Zen-like” as they swing from bar to bar, not appearing to be bothered by their confinement. In another example, Neaera marvels at Arabella, a spider on Sky Lab-2 that had successfully spun a web in space, in spite of not knowing which end was up, literally. Even a dead tomcat gives William inspiration, “He looked as if he’d been flying high until he was brought down. I’ve never seen such a lively-looking dead cat.”
William and Neaera are not the only people who have lessons to learn from animals. Some of the supporting characters in Turtle Diary reflect other ways to suffer from loneliness. Mrs. Inchcliffe, William’s landlady, spends evenings in her lumber-room, remembering her former boyfriend who used to refurbish antiques there. Mr. Sandor, an immigrant who lives next to William, describes his feeling of invisibility: “You make effort, put fake smile on face, make politeness. You nod hello but you don’t look at foreigner like regular human person.” And Miss Neap, his upstairs neighbor, rushes in and out of their building, clasping theatre tickets or rushing to see her parents, but without having any substantial interaction with her neighbors other than smiling and saying a quick hello. There are some moments of humor in William’s interactions with his neighbors, but also poignant scenes in which William has to confront the consequences of a life lived without meaningful relationships with others.
Of all the characters in Turtle Diary, George Fairbairn, the Head Keeper at London Zoo, is the only person living a harmonious life. Early in the novel, William and Neaera both meet him and discuss the turtles with him. George plays a small but meaningful role in the novel, especially as Neaera gets to know him better.
George Fairbairn had been a background person until now. Now he was the dot before my face, the face before my face. Knowing that I should never see the whole picture I didn’t bother to ask myself what it was. He had seemed so medium, so unspecially placed between the top and bottom of life that I hadn’t really given him full human recognition…. He had a clean look and a clean clear feel, nothing muddy. That was enough. There was about him the smell or maybe just the idea of dry grass warm in the sun.
Neaera, whose life is even more isolated than William’s, immerses herself in details. She lacks perspective on her life, how lonely she is, because she could not step back to see herself in the context of a wider world. Just as William’s challenge is to live fully in the present, Neaera’s is to gain the perspective to see her life, and the people around her, in context.
In Turtle Diary, Hoban refuses to present simple solutions or pat endings. Their plan to free the turtles is a catalyst for change in William and Neaera’s lives, rather than serving as the novel’s focus. This is one of the novel’s strengths: exploring loneliness in all its complexity. Although Turtle Diary was originally published in 1975, Hoban’s exploration of William and Neaera’s loneliness feels like it could have been published in 2013. This relevance comes in part from Hoban’s ability to depict interior lives, to weave existential speculation and emotions through quotidian tasks and quirky observations. In part, it stems from the persistence of Hoban’s main concerns: coming to terms with middle-age; learning to live fully in the present; gaining true perspective on a life, past, present, and future. It seems we still have lessons to learn from Hoban’s sea turtles.
It would be understandable to expect Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary to be a light-hearted romantic comedy, one where two lonely protagonists come together over a crazy caper, a plan to set free the sea turtles in the London Zoo, fall in love, and live happily ever after. Fortunately, Hoban’s 1975 novel bears little resemblance to this simplistic narrative. Instead, Turtle Diary is a quiet, thoughtful examination of the loneliness of middle age and the quest to break free of it. William G. is divorced, 45, living alone in a small flat. He is estranged from his ex-wife and his two daughters, works in a bookshop and searches for ways to fill his empty hours. Neaera H., a writer and illustrator of children’s books, is single, 43, living a solitary life in which she works late into the night, and goes days without talking to another person. They both seek solace in visits to the London Zoo, where they independently arrive at the same plan: to set free three large sea turtles that are confined in a small area in the zoo’s aquarium. After meeting in William’s bookshop over books about turtles, they eventually share their “turtle thoughts” with each other, and embark on a plan to set the turtles free off the coast of Polperro, Cornwall. Turtle Diary explores both the turtles’ significance as symbols of a different way to live, and William and Neaera’s respective struggles to reshape their lives. This is a novel that focuses not so much on William and Neaera’s freeing the turtles, as on their attempts to free themselves.
The novel’s structure provides rich opportunities to get to know both characters’ thoughts and fears, as its chapters are alternating diary entries written by each character. Hoban creates internal monologues that weave together observations of settings, recollections of interactions with others, philosophical musings, passages from novels and poems, memories, and the minutiae of daily tasks. Both William and Neaera are frozen by fear of being hurt. Although they are lonely, they veer from contact with others. And their loneliness bears the weight of time lost with little to show for it. As William notes,
I used to think when I shaved and looked at my face that that bit of time didn’t count, was just the time in between things. Now I think it’s the time that counts most. It’s those times that all the other times are in between. It’s the time when nothing helps and the great heavy boot of the past is planted squarely in your back and showing you forward. Sometimes my mind gives me a flash of road I’ll never see again, sometimes a face that’s gone, gone. Moments like grains of sand but the beach is empty. Millions of moments in forty-five years. Letters in boxes, photos in drawers.
For both William and Neaera, sea turtles represent a different way to live. No regrets, no hesitation, no existential struggles. Throughout their diary entries, William and Neaera marvel at the sea turtles’ uncanny ability to navigate through thousands of miles, swimming through ocean currents to Ascension Island to breed. The turtles live by instincts, and their actions embody what they are. As Neaera notes, “[The turtles] were compacted of finding, finding was embodied in them.” In one passage, William jumps from his speculations about shamans to this reflection about the sea turtles,
Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding? Swimming with Pangaea printed on my brain and bones, the ancient continent that was before the land masses drifted apart. That’s part of it too: there were no seas between, the land was one, there was one thing, unbroken. Now there are thousands of miles of open water and the strong ones, the swimmers, the unlost, are driven to trace the paths between, maintain the ancient connection. I don’t know whether I can keep going. A turtle doesn’t have to decide every morning whether to keep on bothering, it just carries on. Maybe that’s why man kills everything: envy.
William and Neaera cringe to see the turtles and other animals caged at the zoo, yet another example of humans’ callousness. Throughout the novel, animals are juxtaposed with humans. Animals represent a kind of integrity, an ability to live in the moment and to act without agonizing over potential dangers. In one passage, Neaera considers the behavior of the wading birds at the zoo:
The birds were all quite good-natured and reasonable about it, they seemed more grown-up than the Zoo management, as if they’d been caught and caged not because they weren’t clever enough to avoid it but because they simply didn’t think in terms of nets and cages, those were things for cunning children. So here they all were, interned for none of them knew how long. They made the best of it, better than people would have done I think, and all of them appeared to get on rather neatly together…. I felt dissatisfied, as one does when morally strong preconceptions have to be questioned. The birds were not silent prisoners wasting away like Dr. Manette in the Bastille nor were they beating pitiful wings against the wire mesh of their captivity. Their understanding of the whole thing seemed deeper and simpler than mine.
William describes the gibbons as “Zen-like” as they swing from bar to bar, not appearing to be bothered by their confinement. In another example, Neaera marvels at Arabella, a spider on Sky Lab-2 that had successfully spun a web in space, in spite of not knowing which end was up, literally. Even a dead tomcat gives William inspiration, “He looked as if he’d been flying high until he was brought down. I’ve never seen such a lively-looking dead cat.”
William and Neaera are not the only people who have lessons to learn from animals. Some of the supporting characters in Turtle Diary reflect other ways to suffer from loneliness. Mrs. Inchcliffe, William’s landlady, spends evenings in her lumber-room, remembering her former boyfriend who used to refurbish antiques there. Mr. Sandor, an immigrant who lives next to William, describes his feeling of invisibility: “You make effort, put fake smile on face, make politeness. You nod hello but you don’t look at foreigner like regular human person.” And Miss Neap, his upstairs neighbor, rushes in and out of their building, clasping theatre tickets or rushing to see her parents, but without having any substantial interaction with her neighbors other than smiling and saying a quick hello. There are some moments of humor in William’s interactions with his neighbors, but also poignant scenes in which William has to confront the consequences of a life lived without meaningful relationships with others.
Of all the characters in Turtle Diary, George Fairbairn, the Head Keeper at London Zoo, is the only person living a harmonious life. Early in the novel, William and Neaera both meet him and discuss the turtles with him. George plays a small but meaningful role in the novel, especially as Neaera gets to know him better.
George Fairbairn had been a background person until now. Now he was the dot before my face, the face before my face. Knowing that I should never see the whole picture I didn’t bother to ask myself what it was. He had seemed so medium, so unspecially placed between the top and bottom of life that I hadn’t really given him full human recognition…. He had a clean look and a clean clear feel, nothing muddy. That was enough. There was about him the smell or maybe just the idea of dry grass warm in the sun.
Neaera, whose life is even more isolated than William’s, immerses herself in details. She lacks perspective on her life, how lonely she is, because she could not step back to see herself in the context of a wider world. Just as William’s challenge is to live fully in the present, Neaera’s is to gain the perspective to see her life, and the people around her, in context.
In Turtle Diary, Hoban refuses to present simple solutions or pat endings. Their plan to free the turtles is a catalyst for change in William and Neaera’s lives, rather than serving as the novel’s focus. This is one of the novel’s strengths: exploring loneliness in all its complexity. Although Turtle Diary was originally published in 1975, Hoban’s exploration of William and Neaera’s loneliness feels like it could have been published in 2013. This relevance comes in part from Hoban’s ability to depict interior lives, to weave existential speculation and emotions through quotidian tasks and quirky observations. In part, it stems from the persistence of Hoban’s main concerns: coming to terms with middle-age; learning to live fully in the present; gaining true perspective on a life, past, present, and future. It seems we still have lessons to learn from Hoban’s sea turtles.
December 15, 2021
Gadzooks! This is the third 5-star book I have read in a row! What pleasure! 🙂 🙃 What’s weird is that last week I read two clunkers (that everybody else on the planet loved) and I was a bit down in the mouth about that. I have to remember there are good days and there are bad days... 😐
When my children were young I used to read some of the Frances books to them. When somebody on this site recommended ‘Turtle Diary” I knew the name ‘Russell Hoban” and that he was a children’s writer and wondered if this was one and the same person. It was...
My edition was a NYRB issue. I think that I could be quite happy if all I had available to read on a desert island were the complete collection of NYRB and Persephone Books. 🙂 🙃
So far I have not said a damn thing about the book. I am not going to summarize the plot — that can be obtained easily enough. I liked the book because:
• It had two interesting characters...they told their story in the first person and each short chapter alternated between them.
• Their interactions in the beginning were wonderful to read
• The ending was not what I expected
• I believed such characters could exist in everyday life, and I was interested in their welfare, wishing the best for them (as opposed to clearly disliking one or both of the characters)
• It was great writing...it started out a bit slow for me but then it rapidly became interesting, and I was hooked...I wanted to know what happened to the turtles and to William G. and Neaera H.
Reviews:
• Wow! This review was spot-on. Read after you read the book though. https://www.bookforum.com/culture/tur...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
• this is the Introduction to the NYRB edition...if you want to read the book, read this after you read the book: https://slate.com/culture/2013/07/rus...
When my children were young I used to read some of the Frances books to them. When somebody on this site recommended ‘Turtle Diary” I knew the name ‘Russell Hoban” and that he was a children’s writer and wondered if this was one and the same person. It was...
My edition was a NYRB issue. I think that I could be quite happy if all I had available to read on a desert island were the complete collection of NYRB and Persephone Books. 🙂 🙃
So far I have not said a damn thing about the book. I am not going to summarize the plot — that can be obtained easily enough. I liked the book because:
• It had two interesting characters...they told their story in the first person and each short chapter alternated between them.
• Their interactions in the beginning were wonderful to read
• The ending was not what I expected
• I believed such characters could exist in everyday life, and I was interested in their welfare, wishing the best for them (as opposed to clearly disliking one or both of the characters)
• It was great writing...it started out a bit slow for me but then it rapidly became interesting, and I was hooked...I wanted to know what happened to the turtles and to William G. and Neaera H.
Reviews:
• Wow! This review was spot-on. Read after you read the book though. https://www.bookforum.com/culture/tur...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
• this is the Introduction to the NYRB edition...if you want to read the book, read this after you read the book: https://slate.com/culture/2013/07/rus...
August 22, 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mo...
-------
This is my first Hoban, and I hope others will follow it, but perhaps not his volumes for children, although I wish I had grown with them.
Anyway I will try to summarise my impression of this novel with a small firmament.
Story: Four stars
Structure: Four and a half stars
Language: Seven stars (what a pleasure it was to read his clear and unencumbered prose).
Characterization: Four stars.
Ecological content: Fourteen stars (not Fifteen for as the video included in the link above, thanks to the garbage of our culture, the oceans are no longer a safe Haven for the Turtles).
Literary references: six stars.
Common-Sense index: Ten stars. I believe it is a mind soaked in common sense that can express itself in the clear language considered above.
Humour: Eight stars (should be a Ten star really, but it really emanates from point above, and not the other way around).
Predictability: Three stars.
Malleability of Dialogue: Two stars. This category is closely knit to Characterization above, and has had a detrimental effect on it. I found that the two characters had the same voice, so that it was the details in the setting (the Water-beetle or the bookstore) that reminded me who of the two characters was talking, not the way they spoke.
September 14, 2013
“The things that matter don’t necessarily make sense. My end seemed immanent in every breath and my beginning seemed never to have happened.”
William G. (page 160)
"In my end is my beginning" cries out William’s subconscious in desperation, quoting T.S. Eliot’s words, while three fine specimens of turtles swim in the green deep ocean towards a destiny they carry within themselves. He doesn’t know if they will ever get there, that’s why they will always be swimming in his mind.
William is a middle-aged man who works in a bookstore, lives in a boarding house and leads an isolated life, tormented by embittered thoughts of his past. He intends to smother his ghosts by smoking cigarette after cigarette, seeing he only feels alive when he does so while despondently wondering about this contradiction “I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself. Very good. Wonderful.”
Divorced and utterly estranged from his two daughters, William has lost all motivation to keep swimming the course of life and now drifts the murky waters of despair and loneliness, wanting to be hurried out of existence.
“All the turtles have is themselves but they will keep going until they find what is in them to find” muses Naerea while looking at the water beetle she keeps in a tank in her flat, as a way of gathering inspiration for her next illustrated book for children. Inspiration that won’t come, even when she sits in the square without a fountain next to her place, trying to imagine how the square would look like if there was one. She can even visualize the bronze sculpture of a girl sitting in the edge of the imaginary fountain, but no words will be written down in her blank, accusing notebook.
Naerea is forty-three, an arty-intellectual-looking spinster, whose weaknesses run from collecting pebbles to watching documentaries about birds, especially when they show oystercatchers. She is slowly drowning in hopelessness, not being able to overcome her writer’s block, which she keeps denying to herself.
The Green Turtles make William and Naerea’s paths cross in one of those daily chance-miracles when they both become hypnotized by their graceful swimming in the Aquarium of the London Zoo. Enraptured by the notion that these creatures are capable of making a migratory journey of thousand of miles, William and Naerea feel an irrepressible urge to set them free from an artificial life led in captivity, and they decide to embark on a bizarre plan to liberate the turtles and release them in the rough blue waters of the Cornish Coast, counting on the cooperation of the turtles' keeper.
It wouldn’t be amiss to describe this novel as the story, told in the form of alternating journal entries, of two depressed Londoners with a lot in common - some would even talk of soul mates or parallel lives- who find each other at their lowest and, in the most extravagant of circumstances, are granted the chance to transform separate misery into potentially comfortable togetherness.
That brief summary might not be amiss, but it would be overly simplistic.
None of the words written in this slim novel are casual, they are all carefully woven, oozing with symbolism and second meanings, each word a dot that will be indispensable to see the bigger picture when the last page is turned and one’s unconsciously withheld breath is finally released.
Mr. Hoban masters his hard-edged and self-deprecating tone, wrapping his characters’ voices in wry irony and mordant intelligence, threading literary, philosophical and musical references along the way while subtly drawing an exquisitely detailed map of coincidences that will leave the reader with more questions than answers. Is it possible for hearts blistering with loneliness to revive in mutual understanding? Can another appease the silent roaring in oneself? Is a moon filled night, freighted with promise and freed turtles, enough to change the course of a lifetime?
These questions run deep, like piercing splinters, inside me.
I have something to confess, before I conclude. I am guilty of being a romantic at heart. I have had idealized notions about the power of love all my life. I still get all emotional when I read the passage where Mr. Rochester, glancing unblinkingly at Jane, asks “Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?”
It’s this kind of girl who notes that this novel is unsentimentally honest about love. It’s this girl, whose eyes are still burning with unshed tears, who bows at the sublime display of quiet heartbreak and acquiesces the truth behind Mr. Hoban’s allegories and sad humor, crackling with linguistic geniality.
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise, said Blake. If the coward persists in his cowardice does he become brave?”
The world is mostly tinged in darkness and, in the end, we are the only ones capable of gathering enough courage to reach for that flickering candle buried deep in us and shed some light in our obscure pathways. The answer lies within ourselves rather than in others.
This girl is aware of that. And so is Mr. Hoban.
******
Note: I want to thank Kris profusely for having brought this wonderful novel to my attention with her astonishing review, which all of you should read if you still haven’t done so.
"In my end is my beginning" cries out William’s subconscious in desperation, quoting T.S. Eliot’s words, while three fine specimens of turtles swim in the green deep ocean towards a destiny they carry within themselves. He doesn’t know if they will ever get there, that’s why they will always be swimming in his mind.
William is a middle-aged man who works in a bookstore, lives in a boarding house and leads an isolated life, tormented by embittered thoughts of his past. He intends to smother his ghosts by smoking cigarette after cigarette, seeing he only feels alive when he does so while despondently wondering about this contradiction “I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself. Very good. Wonderful.”
Divorced and utterly estranged from his two daughters, William has lost all motivation to keep swimming the course of life and now drifts the murky waters of despair and loneliness, wanting to be hurried out of existence.
“All the turtles have is themselves but they will keep going until they find what is in them to find” muses Naerea while looking at the water beetle she keeps in a tank in her flat, as a way of gathering inspiration for her next illustrated book for children. Inspiration that won’t come, even when she sits in the square without a fountain next to her place, trying to imagine how the square would look like if there was one. She can even visualize the bronze sculpture of a girl sitting in the edge of the imaginary fountain, but no words will be written down in her blank, accusing notebook.
Naerea is forty-three, an arty-intellectual-looking spinster, whose weaknesses run from collecting pebbles to watching documentaries about birds, especially when they show oystercatchers. She is slowly drowning in hopelessness, not being able to overcome her writer’s block, which she keeps denying to herself.
The Green Turtles make William and Naerea’s paths cross in one of those daily chance-miracles when they both become hypnotized by their graceful swimming in the Aquarium of the London Zoo. Enraptured by the notion that these creatures are capable of making a migratory journey of thousand of miles, William and Naerea feel an irrepressible urge to set them free from an artificial life led in captivity, and they decide to embark on a bizarre plan to liberate the turtles and release them in the rough blue waters of the Cornish Coast, counting on the cooperation of the turtles' keeper.
It wouldn’t be amiss to describe this novel as the story, told in the form of alternating journal entries, of two depressed Londoners with a lot in common - some would even talk of soul mates or parallel lives- who find each other at their lowest and, in the most extravagant of circumstances, are granted the chance to transform separate misery into potentially comfortable togetherness.
That brief summary might not be amiss, but it would be overly simplistic.
None of the words written in this slim novel are casual, they are all carefully woven, oozing with symbolism and second meanings, each word a dot that will be indispensable to see the bigger picture when the last page is turned and one’s unconsciously withheld breath is finally released.
Mr. Hoban masters his hard-edged and self-deprecating tone, wrapping his characters’ voices in wry irony and mordant intelligence, threading literary, philosophical and musical references along the way while subtly drawing an exquisitely detailed map of coincidences that will leave the reader with more questions than answers. Is it possible for hearts blistering with loneliness to revive in mutual understanding? Can another appease the silent roaring in oneself? Is a moon filled night, freighted with promise and freed turtles, enough to change the course of a lifetime?
These questions run deep, like piercing splinters, inside me.
I have something to confess, before I conclude. I am guilty of being a romantic at heart. I have had idealized notions about the power of love all my life. I still get all emotional when I read the passage where Mr. Rochester, glancing unblinkingly at Jane, asks “Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?”
It’s this kind of girl who notes that this novel is unsentimentally honest about love. It’s this girl, whose eyes are still burning with unshed tears, who bows at the sublime display of quiet heartbreak and acquiesces the truth behind Mr. Hoban’s allegories and sad humor, crackling with linguistic geniality.
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise, said Blake. If the coward persists in his cowardice does he become brave?”
The world is mostly tinged in darkness and, in the end, we are the only ones capable of gathering enough courage to reach for that flickering candle buried deep in us and shed some light in our obscure pathways. The answer lies within ourselves rather than in others.
This girl is aware of that. And so is Mr. Hoban.
******
Note: I want to thank Kris profusely for having brought this wonderful novel to my attention with her astonishing review, which all of you should read if you still haven’t done so.
December 1, 2021
Bir kitapçıda çalışan erkek William G. ile çocuk kitapları yazan kadın Neaera H. İkisi de orta yaşlarda, ikisi de yalnız yaşıyorlar. Ortak noktaları hayvanat bahçesinde bulunan deniz kaplumbağalarını okyanusa salmak, onları özgür kılmak. Çünkü hayvanat bahçesi yargısız hüküm giymiş hayvanların hapishanesidir onlar için. Aslında kendilerini bu kaplumbağalarla özdeşleştirip onlarla birlikte kendilerini de yalnız hissettikleri hayatlarında özgür kılmak isteği yatıyor akıllarında.
Günlüklerinden hikayeyi takip ediyoruz. Oldukça farklı bir tarzı var Russel Hoban’ın, sade ama içleri çok dolu cümlelerle, ilginç fikirlerle (uzay aracındaki örümceğin durumu, özgün terapi yapan hanım, rögar kapağındaki numaradan klasik müzikle ilgi kurmak vb…) hem okuma ilgisini hep yoğun kılıyor, hem de kolay okuma sağlıyor.
Hikayesinin ilginçliği kadar roman kahramanları da ilginç. Ben William’ı daha çok sevdim, özgün kişiliğinden dolayı, hoş Neaera da bir başka güzellikte. Keyifle okunacak çok iyi bir kitap, öneririm. Yazarın başka kitaplarını arayacağım.
Günlüklerinden hikayeyi takip ediyoruz. Oldukça farklı bir tarzı var Russel Hoban’ın, sade ama içleri çok dolu cümlelerle, ilginç fikirlerle (uzay aracındaki örümceğin durumu, özgün terapi yapan hanım, rögar kapağındaki numaradan klasik müzikle ilgi kurmak vb…) hem okuma ilgisini hep yoğun kılıyor, hem de kolay okuma sağlıyor.
Hikayesinin ilginçliği kadar roman kahramanları da ilginç. Ben William’ı daha çok sevdim, özgün kişiliğinden dolayı, hoş Neaera da bir başka güzellikte. Keyifle okunacak çok iyi bir kitap, öneririm. Yazarın başka kitaplarını arayacağım.
June 29, 2017
What happens if a man with the past meets a woman who’s been through a lot?
Two embittered mid aged loners drifting on life’s surface. William, the divorced father of two girls , living in rented room and working in bookshop. And Naera, single writer of children’s stories, with a water – beetle as a pet. Get the picture ? I can imagine what you’re thinking now. But it’s not just like that.
It was quite easy to spoil it and write another unbearable mawkish easy read, bogged down in sentimental pseudo-psychological considerations. Instead of it Hoban created deeply human tale about loneliness, about necessity to change something when you're at a crossroads.
These two strangers after visiting London zoo, independently of each other, decide on releasing sea turtles. One could say easier said than done. Just the opposite. With a little help from aquarium’s worker, William and Naera are preparing plan of freeing the turtles and enforce it.
What's now then ? No, world hasn't fallen down. In fact, no one even noticed the disappearance of the turtles . Our heroes ? Came to terms with life, no, not lived happily ever after - as I said, this is not that story. They are too alike to comfort each other, they have nothing to give to themselves.
Shell can be a shelter and paradoxically a prison as well. And releasing turtles was like getting out of your own shell, leaving a safe haven, consent to it that life sometimes hurts.
Lunching the turtles didn't lunch me.You can't do it with turtles...But with people you never know straightaway what does what. Maybe launching them did launch you but you don't know it yet.
The story is beautifully written in forms alternately chapters with POV of William and Naera. It’s so easy to like and identify with them; sometimes I feel the same. Sometimes I'm like: hello, that’s me, not waving but drowning I’m.
Story with no fireworks, cheap tricks, champagne. Ok, there was a champagne.
And turtles ? They’re swimming and making its way down to the big blue …
I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn’t seen hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.
February 8, 2022
This purported diary is told by two characters whose voices aren’t at all different from each other. I can only surmise that’s intentional as William and Neaera many times not only think about the same thing, but sometimes their independent yet collective thought is stated with the exact same phrasing. One incident points to some sort of telepathy, but it’s more than that: It’s almost as if Hoban is pointing out that, despite superficial differences, they’re the same person.
Near the end, “all the lonely people” (Eleanor Rigby) rang through my head. I should’ve thought of the analogy sooner, but the theme of loneliness is told slant and its desperation arrives with a sentence that jolted me, even though I anticipated it. What is the moment, or the being, that changes your trajectory—that shows you what you might’ve missed while you were focused on something else? Is it the turtles? It’s not the turtles.
Though there’s deep, aching loneliness in this work, I don’t want to forget the humor, especially in William’s chapters—for example, the “birthing” chapter is especially funny in retrospect, when William recalls the event as he battles a housemate. A reread would bring other ‘callbacks’ into sharper focus for me and the book is haunting enough to warrant it.
Near the end, “all the lonely people” (Eleanor Rigby) rang through my head. I should’ve thought of the analogy sooner, but the theme of loneliness is told slant and its desperation arrives with a sentence that jolted me, even though I anticipated it. What is the moment, or the being, that changes your trajectory—that shows you what you might’ve missed while you were focused on something else? Is it the turtles? It’s not the turtles.
Though there’s deep, aching loneliness in this work, I don’t want to forget the humor, especially in William’s chapters—for example, the “birthing” chapter is especially funny in retrospect, when William recalls the event as he battles a housemate. A reread would bring other ‘callbacks’ into sharper focus for me and the book is haunting enough to warrant it.
November 20, 2021
'People write books for children and other people write about the books written for children but I don't think it's for the children at all. I think that all the people who worry so much about the children are really worrying about themselves, about keeping their world together and getting the children to help them do it, getting the children to agree that it is indeed a world. Each new generation of children has to be told: 'This is a world, this is what one does, one lives like this.' Maybe our constant fear is that a generation of children will come along and say: 'This is not a world, this is nothing, this is no way to live at all.''
June 15, 2013
I read and reread this years and years ago when it was one of the few Hobans around -- until the end of the nineties if you were a Hoban fan it was hard going. I had to quit rereading it because I worried I'd burn it out for myself (this actually happened with Good Omens and a few other books! SAD). Now there's a Hoban renaissance, and NYRB has just reissued it (my first, very used copy has this amazingly ugly cover: http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/td...). So now I'm going to read it through again for the first time in a while and oh my God I don't know why I'm overexplaining all this, it's not like the Reading Challenge Police are going to come get me.
I'd read and loved The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Pilgermann and The Medusa Frequency (I'm not actually a big fan of Riddley Walker) so when I saw a used copy of this in....God, it must've been about 1985, 1986 -- I POUNCED upon it, devoured it, and was summarily disappointed. Where were the near-surreal characters? (My favourite of his at the time was probably Kleinzeit, or The Medusa Frequency.) The in-your-face mythological trappings? These were ordinary people. How disappointing! It took me several rereads to see that these "ordinary people" were just as amazing as the lions and pilgrims and heroes, the same thing really -- the way the London Underground in Hoban's books is always the real Underground, the same as the underground we access every night in our dreams, mundane yet bizarre. If a book could be real life (surely the dream of every lonely bibliophile), this book would be it.
This is probably my favourite cover -- I don't know why it got replaced with the ugly glaring red square.
I'd read and loved The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Pilgermann and The Medusa Frequency (I'm not actually a big fan of Riddley Walker) so when I saw a used copy of this in....God, it must've been about 1985, 1986 -- I POUNCED upon it, devoured it, and was summarily disappointed. Where were the near-surreal characters? (My favourite of his at the time was probably Kleinzeit, or The Medusa Frequency.) The in-your-face mythological trappings? These were ordinary people. How disappointing! It took me several rereads to see that these "ordinary people" were just as amazing as the lions and pilgrims and heroes, the same thing really -- the way the London Underground in Hoban's books is always the real Underground, the same as the underground we access every night in our dreams, mundane yet bizarre. If a book could be real life (surely the dream of every lonely bibliophile), this book would be it.
This is probably my favourite cover -- I don't know why it got replaced with the ugly glaring red square.
May 8, 2015
An ode to loneliness.
Two people, in alternating voices, takes the reader though their life experiences, thoughts, and social disconnection from society.
William G. (45), a bookstore clerk, and Neaera H. (43), a successful children books author, both, independently, share a solicitous passion for sea turtles. They become erudited about the animals in their lonely pursuit of meaning in their lives. Just to mean something to someone or something would validate their existence.
They both write diaries and would ultimately meet, when both of them, unbeknownst to each other, plan to rescue the three sea turtles at the London Zoo from their confined water tank and release them back into the ocean. This moment would become the crossroads of their separate lives.
Their obsession to free the animals, which would take place at the coast of Polperro, Cornwal, becomes a metaphor for saving themselves from the drifting, slow-moving constriction of their own lives.
The diaries present the two middle-aged author's thoughts on everything, as both of them is in a comfort zone prescribed by their circumstances. William is a divorced father of two and Neaera is a spinster. He lives in rented rooms and she in her apartment, with a water beetle as a pet.
I loved the ending. It was different and good. It's not the most exciting book I have ever read, but it was an prodigious, introspective experience, no sententious rhetoric present either. In the end it is about succour lives and how we all interpret and react to each other's feelings of loneliness. How comfortable we are with the thought and possibility.
Yes, it is a must read.
Two people, in alternating voices, takes the reader though their life experiences, thoughts, and social disconnection from society.
William G. (45), a bookstore clerk, and Neaera H. (43), a successful children books author, both, independently, share a solicitous passion for sea turtles. They become erudited about the animals in their lonely pursuit of meaning in their lives. Just to mean something to someone or something would validate their existence.
They both write diaries and would ultimately meet, when both of them, unbeknownst to each other, plan to rescue the three sea turtles at the London Zoo from their confined water tank and release them back into the ocean. This moment would become the crossroads of their separate lives.
Their obsession to free the animals, which would take place at the coast of Polperro, Cornwal, becomes a metaphor for saving themselves from the drifting, slow-moving constriction of their own lives.
The diaries present the two middle-aged author's thoughts on everything, as both of them is in a comfort zone prescribed by their circumstances. William is a divorced father of two and Neaera is a spinster. He lives in rented rooms and she in her apartment, with a water beetle as a pet.
I loved the ending. It was different and good. It's not the most exciting book I have ever read, but it was an prodigious, introspective experience, no sententious rhetoric present either. In the end it is about succour lives and how we all interpret and react to each other's feelings of loneliness. How comfortable we are with the thought and possibility.
Yes, it is a must read.
September 20, 2015
Green Turtles. Chelonia mydas. They feed along the coast of Brazil but once a year they swim 1,400 miles to Ascension Island to breed. Ascension Island is only five miles long. How the turtles find that little out-of-way island motel, no one knows. They've always been going there, as long as man has tracked these things. The turtles are hard-wired, in some naturally selective way, to do this. The very idea is irresistibly beautiful.
The turtles tryst there in spite of real peril, such as sharks. And humans. Chelonia mydas, see, is the essential ingredient in turtle soup, something I have just now officially sworn off. But sometimes the turtles get packaged up and unloaded in the aquarium section of zoos. For our pleasure, they swim in tanks which get smaller for them every year. And every year, when the urge rises, and they know they must swim to Ascension Island.....well, they can't.
I really don't like zoos. I don't like the cages, sure, but even worse is the idea that the animals have been taken away from where they live. They always look sad to me. (Prisons trouble me, too, but I realize that is a more complicated issue).
Independently, Neaera H. and William G. go to the zoo and see the turtles. It's not right, they independently think. Their paths cross. And cross again. They read it in each other's face. And when they speak, they say in unison....'The turtles'. And so they conspire to free them.
A reader would be foolish, though, to think this is just some aquatic Setting Free the Bears. This is about finding your inner Turtle. About an inexplicable search for identity. And it's about Loneliness.
The obligatory nyrb-classics Introduction references Eleanor Rigby and there is one minor character who was buried along with her name/
Nobody came. But Neaera H. and William G. aren't wearing that kind of loneliness, I don't think. They are odd but not unattractive. They are not unintelligent. They don't, for that matter, have to swim 1,400 miles to bed. They are not those sad souls who are forgotten, waiting at the window. Instead, they have seen the world, and are tired of it.
And so, like the turtles:
The essence of it is that they can find something and they are not being allowed to do it. What more can you do to a creature, short of killing it, than prevent it from finding what it can find? How must they feel?
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
I paused in my reading of The Dying Grass not because that brick bored me but because this one just jumped into my hands and captured me. Let me tell you, a Morality Lesson need not take 1,300 pages.
There was something magical about this book for me (he gushed). Maybe it spoke to my inner Turtle. Like this:
Last night I had a dream thought that I held on to carefully until this morning. It was: Those who know it have forgotten every part of it, those who don't know it remember it completely. Aggravating. Those who know or don't know what? I haven't a clue and what's most annoying is that something in me knows what was meant.
....it was that kind of day,
The turtles tryst there in spite of real peril, such as sharks. And humans. Chelonia mydas, see, is the essential ingredient in turtle soup, something I have just now officially sworn off. But sometimes the turtles get packaged up and unloaded in the aquarium section of zoos. For our pleasure, they swim in tanks which get smaller for them every year. And every year, when the urge rises, and they know they must swim to Ascension Island.....well, they can't.
I really don't like zoos. I don't like the cages, sure, but even worse is the idea that the animals have been taken away from where they live. They always look sad to me. (Prisons trouble me, too, but I realize that is a more complicated issue).
Independently, Neaera H. and William G. go to the zoo and see the turtles. It's not right, they independently think. Their paths cross. And cross again. They read it in each other's face. And when they speak, they say in unison....'The turtles'. And so they conspire to free them.
A reader would be foolish, though, to think this is just some aquatic Setting Free the Bears. This is about finding your inner Turtle. About an inexplicable search for identity. And it's about Loneliness.
The obligatory nyrb-classics Introduction references Eleanor Rigby and there is one minor character who was buried along with her name/
Nobody came. But Neaera H. and William G. aren't wearing that kind of loneliness, I don't think. They are odd but not unattractive. They are not unintelligent. They don't, for that matter, have to swim 1,400 miles to bed. They are not those sad souls who are forgotten, waiting at the window. Instead, they have seen the world, and are tired of it.
And so, like the turtles:
The essence of it is that they can find something and they are not being allowed to do it. What more can you do to a creature, short of killing it, than prevent it from finding what it can find? How must they feel?
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
I paused in my reading of The Dying Grass not because that brick bored me but because this one just jumped into my hands and captured me. Let me tell you, a Morality Lesson need not take 1,300 pages.
There was something magical about this book for me (he gushed). Maybe it spoke to my inner Turtle. Like this:
Last night I had a dream thought that I held on to carefully until this morning. It was: Those who know it have forgotten every part of it, those who don't know it remember it completely. Aggravating. Those who know or don't know what? I haven't a clue and what's most annoying is that something in me knows what was meant.
....it was that kind of day,
June 30, 2015
" I think of the turtles swimming steadily against the current all the way to Ascension. I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn’t seen hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.”
I re-read an early section of this stunning novel, from which the above is an excerpt, perhaps four times before I could move on. Its beauty and its power was breathtaking.
Look, for example, at the rhythm in this passage - the use of repetition ("over", for example, or "water" or "dark"), it is incantatory, it pulls us somewhere. Then we have the lovely alliteration (all those "S"'s in particular), which is weighted to perfection.
My usual reading pace, even for relatively "complex" novels is around 80-100 pages a day. With this I was closer to 30. Simply because I was savoring every phrase, every carefully crafted sentence.
And as for meaning, well, there are many wonderful reviews up here already (and thanks to Kris for bringing this book to my attention in the first place) which deal more with the subtle and complex philosophical content of the text.
It is a masterpiece and I loved every second of it.
I re-read an early section of this stunning novel, from which the above is an excerpt, perhaps four times before I could move on. Its beauty and its power was breathtaking.
Look, for example, at the rhythm in this passage - the use of repetition ("over", for example, or "water" or "dark"), it is incantatory, it pulls us somewhere. Then we have the lovely alliteration (all those "S"'s in particular), which is weighted to perfection.
My usual reading pace, even for relatively "complex" novels is around 80-100 pages a day. With this I was closer to 30. Simply because I was savoring every phrase, every carefully crafted sentence.
And as for meaning, well, there are many wonderful reviews up here already (and thanks to Kris for bringing this book to my attention in the first place) which deal more with the subtle and complex philosophical content of the text.
It is a masterpiece and I loved every second of it.
Read
October 16, 2017This is the third Russell Hoban book I've read and even though the writing and the storyline are very different to those of Riddley Walker and Kleinzeit, in a blind reading test (!!!), I would still guess Hoban had written this book as there are little clues dropped here and there which echo details from the other two books, eg., smoking, mirrors and advertising (advertising is all smoke and mirrors?).
Also common to the three is the sense of a journey needing to be made but one which may or may not lead very far. There is a symmetry about this book which particularly appealed to me; the two main characters, going about their different and mostly separate lives, yet continually having parallel experiences. Further interesting parallels exist between the lives and destinies of the characters and those of the turtles; not all turtles make it to turtle heaven.
So there is philosophy here, though quite low key, and some of it delivered via a very unassuming water beetle. All in all, a very satisfying reading experience.
Also common to the three is the sense of a journey needing to be made but one which may or may not lead very far. There is a symmetry about this book which particularly appealed to me; the two main characters, going about their different and mostly separate lives, yet continually having parallel experiences. Further interesting parallels exist between the lives and destinies of the characters and those of the turtles; not all turtles make it to turtle heaven.
So there is philosophy here, though quite low key, and some of it delivered via a very unassuming water beetle. All in all, a very satisfying reading experience.
September 15, 2018
«The things that matter don't necessarily make sense. My end seemed immanent in every breath and my beginning seemed never to have happened».
Cuando las primeras tortugas marinas de una camada salen de sus huevos, estas se encargan de ayudar a las otras a nacer. A partir de ese momento, suelen nadar juntas para tener más chances de sobrevivir.
Turtle Diary, de Russell Hoban, es uno de los mejores libros que he leído este año. Una brillante historia sobre dos solitarios que fantasean con la idea de liberar a varias tortugas de un acuario. Esto puede parecer un tanto cómico en principio, pero pronto se descubre que Turtle Diary trata más sobre la soledad de los personajes que de la liberación de dichos reptiles. Porque Hoban es un maestro en retratar la desesperación interna de las personas, un experto en sacarle fotografías a la angustia humana. Con una escritura extraordinaria y minuciosa, el autor forjó una historia valiente, filosófica y conmovedora acerca de sus dos entrañables protagonistas, quienes buscan liberarse de su soledad y luchan por encontrar la razón que los impulsa a seguir viviendo.
Estos protagonistas son William G. y Neaera H. Él trabaja en una librería; ella es escritora. Pero ambos están unidos por algo más íntimo: el desamparo, la falta de pertenencia con el mundo. William es divorciado, hace tiempo que no sabe nada de sus hijas, mientras que Neaera es una solitaria por naturaleza, pero esto se ve empeorado por su bloqueo del escritor. Así, a través de breves monólogos, el lector va a ir conociéndolos y notando ciertos patrones, como el miedo a la pérdida. Porque, especialmente en William, el temor a la decepción lo separa de cualquier lazo auténtico con otra persona. William es un personaje singular y atractivo, un hombre que solo fumando se puede sentir verdaderamente vivo («I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself»). En cambio, Neaera es una mujer acostumbrada a su aislamiento, taciturna e insegura, que pasa sus noches en vela intentando escribir, sin ver a nadie por semanas o incluso meses. Pero ambos sufren de igual forma la desesperación interna que los amarra a la angustia, y Hoban hizo un excelente trabajo retratándolo.
Pero esto no se queda aquí, ya que a través de los ojos de estos dos solitarios, muchos más personajes importantes desfilan sobre sus páginas. Hay que prestarles especial atención a ellos. Porque todos los personajes de Turtle Diary experimentan de distinta manera la indiferencia y el hastío, la depresión y la melancolía. Un inmigrante que siente que nadie lo comprende, un trabajador del zoológico en paz consigo mismo pero tremendamente solo, una señora que por las noches recuerda con nostalgia a su expareja, una mujer a la que todos ignoran. Estos personajes también existen, y así como Hoban hizo un excelente trabajo reflejando la angustia de William y Neaera, también se destacó con estos personajes, que no dejan de mostrarse en un segundo plano, ocultos adrede, pero no por eso menos humanos.
Quizá el punto negativo más notable que debo resaltar sea que tanto William como Neaera tienen la misma voz narrativa. Cuando empecé a leer esta novela, al principio me costó entender que eran dos personajes diferentes. Esto creo que puede ser intencional, de hecho, estoy seguro de eso, pero de todas formas me hubiera gustado que se usara otro recurso, porque esto hizo que, en parte, los protagonistas perdieran cierta corporeidad. De cualquier manera, esto puede ser irrelevante si se tiene en cuenta el verdadero fin de este libro, que es el de mostrar la muerte que anida dentro de sus personajes, la cual se nutre de su incapacidad de hallar un sentido en vivir.
Cuando las primeras tortugas marinas de una camada salen de sus huevos, estas se encargan de ayudar a las otras a nacer. A partir de ese momento, suelen nadar juntas para tener más chances de sobrevivir. Con Turtle Diary, lo que Hoban nos intenta decir es que solos no podemos, que solamente en compañía podemos resistir. Porque si bien Turtle Diary es un libro triste y en muchas ocasiones pesimista, en otras es esperanzador y alienta al lector a superarse. Conmovedor, profundo y cruel, ampliamente recomendado.
Cuando las primeras tortugas marinas de una camada salen de sus huevos, estas se encargan de ayudar a las otras a nacer. A partir de ese momento, suelen nadar juntas para tener más chances de sobrevivir.
Turtle Diary, de Russell Hoban, es uno de los mejores libros que he leído este año. Una brillante historia sobre dos solitarios que fantasean con la idea de liberar a varias tortugas de un acuario. Esto puede parecer un tanto cómico en principio, pero pronto se descubre que Turtle Diary trata más sobre la soledad de los personajes que de la liberación de dichos reptiles. Porque Hoban es un maestro en retratar la desesperación interna de las personas, un experto en sacarle fotografías a la angustia humana. Con una escritura extraordinaria y minuciosa, el autor forjó una historia valiente, filosófica y conmovedora acerca de sus dos entrañables protagonistas, quienes buscan liberarse de su soledad y luchan por encontrar la razón que los impulsa a seguir viviendo.
Estos protagonistas son William G. y Neaera H. Él trabaja en una librería; ella es escritora. Pero ambos están unidos por algo más íntimo: el desamparo, la falta de pertenencia con el mundo. William es divorciado, hace tiempo que no sabe nada de sus hijas, mientras que Neaera es una solitaria por naturaleza, pero esto se ve empeorado por su bloqueo del escritor. Así, a través de breves monólogos, el lector va a ir conociéndolos y notando ciertos patrones, como el miedo a la pérdida. Porque, especialmente en William, el temor a la decepción lo separa de cualquier lazo auténtico con otra persona. William es un personaje singular y atractivo, un hombre que solo fumando se puede sentir verdaderamente vivo («I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself»). En cambio, Neaera es una mujer acostumbrada a su aislamiento, taciturna e insegura, que pasa sus noches en vela intentando escribir, sin ver a nadie por semanas o incluso meses. Pero ambos sufren de igual forma la desesperación interna que los amarra a la angustia, y Hoban hizo un excelente trabajo retratándolo.
Pero esto no se queda aquí, ya que a través de los ojos de estos dos solitarios, muchos más personajes importantes desfilan sobre sus páginas. Hay que prestarles especial atención a ellos. Porque todos los personajes de Turtle Diary experimentan de distinta manera la indiferencia y el hastío, la depresión y la melancolía. Un inmigrante que siente que nadie lo comprende, un trabajador del zoológico en paz consigo mismo pero tremendamente solo, una señora que por las noches recuerda con nostalgia a su expareja, una mujer a la que todos ignoran. Estos personajes también existen, y así como Hoban hizo un excelente trabajo reflejando la angustia de William y Neaera, también se destacó con estos personajes, que no dejan de mostrarse en un segundo plano, ocultos adrede, pero no por eso menos humanos.
Quizá el punto negativo más notable que debo resaltar sea que tanto William como Neaera tienen la misma voz narrativa. Cuando empecé a leer esta novela, al principio me costó entender que eran dos personajes diferentes. Esto creo que puede ser intencional, de hecho, estoy seguro de eso, pero de todas formas me hubiera gustado que se usara otro recurso, porque esto hizo que, en parte, los protagonistas perdieran cierta corporeidad. De cualquier manera, esto puede ser irrelevante si se tiene en cuenta el verdadero fin de este libro, que es el de mostrar la muerte que anida dentro de sus personajes, la cual se nutre de su incapacidad de hallar un sentido en vivir.
Cuando las primeras tortugas marinas de una camada salen de sus huevos, estas se encargan de ayudar a las otras a nacer. A partir de ese momento, suelen nadar juntas para tener más chances de sobrevivir. Con Turtle Diary, lo que Hoban nos intenta decir es que solos no podemos, que solamente en compañía podemos resistir. Porque si bien Turtle Diary es un libro triste y en muchas ocasiones pesimista, en otras es esperanzador y alienta al lector a superarse. Conmovedor, profundo y cruel, ampliamente recomendado.
March 13, 2021
Bitirdiğimde bende bıraktığı his, Testről és Lélekről filmini bitirdiğimdekine çok benzerdi. Yalnızlığı övmeye ya da yermeye, düş kırıklıklarını hayat dersine çevirmeye kalkışmadan yalnızlığı, düş kırıklıklarını yazmış R. Hoban. Birbirine bu denli benzeyen iki karakterin böylesine ayrı üsluplarla konuşması, düşünmesi ve evlerin, odaların, mekanların tasvirleri kitabın en sevdiğim yanları oldu. İyi ki okudum.
October 28, 2024
"'Nasıl böyle neşeli kalabiliyorsun?' dedim, 'Hayatta olmanın mahzuru yok' dedi." 🤍
Kaplumbağa Günlüğü, birbirini tanımayan iki insanın, Londra Hayvanat Bahçesi Akvaryumu’ndaki üç deniz kaplumbağasını özgür bırakma fikrini takıntı haline getirmesiyle yollarının kesişmesini anlatıyor. Bu iki kişinin günlükleri üzerinden hem bu ortak hayallerini hayata geçirme girişimlerini hem de bu amaç ve idealin onlarda nasıl bir karşılığı olduğunu okuyoruz.
Benim çok sevdiğim bir edebiyat türü bu; sakin, yalın, sade ama incelikli. Bu küçük öykü üzerinden bir sürü başka şey anlatıyor Russel Hoban; doğayla kurduğumuz (ya da kuramadığımız mı demeli?) ilişki, yalıtılmış hayatlarımızdaki yalnızlığımız, birine ya da bir amaca ait olmaya duyduğumuz büyük ihtiyaç; bitmek bilmeyen anlam arayışımız.
Günlüklerini okuduğumuz iki anlatıcının düşünme biçimlerinin birbirine ne kadar benzediğini vurguluyor yazar sık sık, dolayısıyla ikisinin günlüklerindeki dilin bu kadar aynı olması muhtemelen bilinçli bir tercih ama bana biraz fazla geldi; kitaba dair bir eleştirim bu olabilir. Öyle ki zaman zaman bölümün başına dönüp kimi okuduğumu kontrol etmem gerekti, iki anlatıcının seslerinin azıcık da olsa ayrışmasını isterdim.
Karakterlerin yolda gördükleri ya da gazetede okudukları küçük şeylerden yola çıkıp yaptıkları büyük sorgulamaları okumak nefisti; benim kafam da böyle çalıştığı, küçük şeyleri kafamda biriktirip içlerinden anlam bulmaya bayıldığım için çok sevdim. (Bir de anlatıcıların zaman zaman çok komik olduğunu eklemeliyim, özellikle bir "Özgün Terapi" bölümü var ki kahkahalarla okudum.)
Okuduğum bir incelemede birisi "bu kitabın bir müziği olsa The Beatles'ın Eleanor Rigby'si olurdu" yazmıştı, ne kadar yerinde bir tespit. Şarkının meşhur sorusuyla bitireyim madem: "All the lonely people / Where do they all belong?"
Bu nazik kitabı okuyunuz efendim, seveceksiniz.
Kaplumbağa Günlüğü, birbirini tanımayan iki insanın, Londra Hayvanat Bahçesi Akvaryumu’ndaki üç deniz kaplumbağasını özgür bırakma fikrini takıntı haline getirmesiyle yollarının kesişmesini anlatıyor. Bu iki kişinin günlükleri üzerinden hem bu ortak hayallerini hayata geçirme girişimlerini hem de bu amaç ve idealin onlarda nasıl bir karşılığı olduğunu okuyoruz.
Benim çok sevdiğim bir edebiyat türü bu; sakin, yalın, sade ama incelikli. Bu küçük öykü üzerinden bir sürü başka şey anlatıyor Russel Hoban; doğayla kurduğumuz (ya da kuramadığımız mı demeli?) ilişki, yalıtılmış hayatlarımızdaki yalnızlığımız, birine ya da bir amaca ait olmaya duyduğumuz büyük ihtiyaç; bitmek bilmeyen anlam arayışımız.
Günlüklerini okuduğumuz iki anlatıcının düşünme biçimlerinin birbirine ne kadar benzediğini vurguluyor yazar sık sık, dolayısıyla ikisinin günlüklerindeki dilin bu kadar aynı olması muhtemelen bilinçli bir tercih ama bana biraz fazla geldi; kitaba dair bir eleştirim bu olabilir. Öyle ki zaman zaman bölümün başına dönüp kimi okuduğumu kontrol etmem gerekti, iki anlatıcının seslerinin azıcık da olsa ayrışmasını isterdim.
Karakterlerin yolda gördükleri ya da gazetede okudukları küçük şeylerden yola çıkıp yaptıkları büyük sorgulamaları okumak nefisti; benim kafam da böyle çalıştığı, küçük şeyleri kafamda biriktirip içlerinden anlam bulmaya bayıldığım için çok sevdim. (Bir de anlatıcıların zaman zaman çok komik olduğunu eklemeliyim, özellikle bir "Özgün Terapi" bölümü var ki kahkahalarla okudum.)
Okuduğum bir incelemede birisi "bu kitabın bir müziği olsa The Beatles'ın Eleanor Rigby'si olurdu" yazmıştı, ne kadar yerinde bir tespit. Şarkının meşhur sorusuyla bitireyim madem: "All the lonely people / Where do they all belong?"
Bu nazik kitabı okuyunuz efendim, seveceksiniz.
July 12, 2014
A change of pace and a slow stroll, if that's what you're seeking. The theme is loneliness, in this case that of a middle-aged bookstore clerk (William G.) and a middle-aged children's book author (Neaera H.), who are brought together by a singular (and "singular") desire to free not the whales but the sea turtles in a London zoo's aquarium.
What's odd is how the plot and actual execution of the turtle liberation is incidental to the book. The delightful devil is in the details, the casual everyday observations each person makes in the back-and-forth, my-chapter-then-yours format of Hoban's manuscript. Both William and Neaera have the loner's sharp eye not only for their fellow man's foibles but for their own. There's a certain subtle irony to their observations, in fact. Some readers might consider it inconsequential, but the totality of the whole, seen through a metaphor darkly, creates a different picture.
Bottom line: If you're hunting up plots, action, suspense, leave this one for the turtles. If you're of a more leisurely, introspective turn, these 190 pp. might fit the bill.
What's odd is how the plot and actual execution of the turtle liberation is incidental to the book. The delightful devil is in the details, the casual everyday observations each person makes in the back-and-forth, my-chapter-then-yours format of Hoban's manuscript. Both William and Neaera have the loner's sharp eye not only for their fellow man's foibles but for their own. There's a certain subtle irony to their observations, in fact. Some readers might consider it inconsequential, but the totality of the whole, seen through a metaphor darkly, creates a different picture.
Bottom line: If you're hunting up plots, action, suspense, leave this one for the turtles. If you're of a more leisurely, introspective turn, these 190 pp. might fit the bill.
October 3, 2013
How do they not think about the sharks when they’re swimming that 1,400 miles? Green turtles must have the kind of mind that doesn’t think about sharks unless a shark is there. That must be how it is with them. I can’t believe they’d swim 1,400 miles thinking about sharks. Sea turtles can’t shut themselves up in their shells as land turtles do.
So shrieked Sartre, “Man is condemned to be free”. This condemnation is as difficult to imagine as it is obvious and plausible. Freedom as condemnation is as real a marriage of the incompatible that is lasting, nevertheless. Such is the travesty of modern man, he seems always in chains and yet it’s the freedom’s cross he bears across his breast. Life is a bondage where man is free. Free in incarceration; its his condemnation. Absurd as it sounds, absurd as it feels, absurd as it appears and even absurd in its surreptitiousness, that is how it is. No condemnation is overtly sweet in the plebeian parlance, neither is this one. Again, absurd as it is, the very condemnation replete with visible misery and desperation hides in its bosom, satiation, fulfillment and if I may, happiness and joy even. Nothing but absurd and absurdly so.
“I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself. Very good. Wonderful.”
A tight-rope walk is what life is akin to. Untrained and uninitiated, its us who are thrown over this stretch of string. Well if we ignore the involuntary accidents, does everyone of us end up on the other side? Even from among those who do end up on the other side, how many manage it meaningfully? Is it possible for a tight rope walker to be free all the time, fearlessly free? How can fear ever leave the one whose every step can mean whether he will retain the choice for the next one? Never abandoned by fear, how can he be free? So, does everyone who make it on the other side, finish up the tight rope walk? What good is the crossing if it is ugly and replete with wriggling and slips galore, sissy and wet with nothing but frets and catcalls? To hide in nooks and crannies, pusillanimously writhing through the sieves and selfishly treading over, is not finishing. Its not merely the crossing over but the manner of doing so that matters. In Actual reality, its hard to imagine anyone more freer than a tight rope walker; he has gotten rid of the greatest impediment to freedom, fear. Right within our condemnation, lies our freedom, either we must succesfully cross over, or fall with a bang...
To live with a yowl and die with a WHAM!
Falling in fear is simply dying. But the glory lies in fearlessly, successfully carrying out to completion, that tight rope walk or even merely attempting it fearlessly. Completion is glory but even falling to death in the pursuance is brilliantly scintillating. By being born in this maze, we are condemned till the eternity of our lives. But its not that we are ever condemned just for the sake of it, to be condemned. The freedom that is inevitably and inextricably tied to this condemnation, rather gilds the condemnation, often loses its sheen in the 'business' of life. Freedom is the yoke of human condition and it feeds on the best that each one of us has to offer, nothing short of the best can sustain it. Death of course is inevitable and so is pain that accompanies man in life but freedom always has a knack of shining through the futility, is at all times welcoming with its accouterments of metaphors, signals and signs, whether we are prepared or languishing in our tepid, despondent languor is another matter.
This morning near the bus stop by a tree a dead cat said hello to me. There he was, he too had gone into winter with a wham. He looked as if he’d been flying high until he was brought down. I’ve never seen such a lively-looking dead cat.
...........
A grey stripy tom he was with a head like a Roman senator, one eye open, one eye shut. His whole corpse seemed expressive of the WHAM! when his life met his death. He looked as if he’d been one hundred per cent alive until the lorry closed his account in the flower of his tomcathood and his mortal remains were cheerful rather than depressing. To live with a yowl and die with a WHAM!
The cajoling metaphors can be the turtles that simultaneously piqued William G. and Neaera H. Sea-turtles, eternally attuned, to the lengthy sea journeys stretching over thousands of miles of dark, deep seas and not to the zoo aquariums they belong. The improbable thought of re-installing them back to their original homes, suddenly assumes willful yet involuntary exigency and re-defines the future lives of reluctantly enthusiastic protagonists.
Then it doesn’t seem hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind. And when they can’t see the sun, what then? Their vision isn’t good enough for star sights. Do they go by smell, taste, faith?
In a single moment of brilliant surprise, a symbol expresses itself and initiates its beholders into concretely real action, a subtle tumult that potentially extricates the two freckled souls from the throes of rusted pasts and into the intuitive brilliance, that is now. To fearlessly ‘hope’ for nothing and yet being conscious to everything. Nothing sensational happens that transforms everything in one sway but sure streaks of energy and freshness, of novel agility are felt in the very same common place lives that they previously led.
Something very slowly, very dimly has been working in my mind and now is clear to me: there are no incidences, there are only coincidences.
Finally, freedom is felt even in the presence of trenchant condemnation whose acerbic grip is loosened. The very conundrum of hum-drum life that they traversed in, didn’t seem bothersome and taxing any longer. It was all the same but the change was inside them and they just did not care any more. Any of this cannot be explained or deciphered mathematically in any greater detail but can only be marveled at in surprised awe. And it must remain so if it has to retain its power as a symbol.
Camden Town is the windiest tube station I know. Coming up on the escalator with my hair flying I felt as if I was coming out of a dark place and into the light, then I laughed because that’s what I was actually doing.
.............
Nothing was different or better and I didn’t think I was either but I didn’t mind being alive at the moment. After all who knew what might happen?
............
Between now and then were all kinds of minutes, all of them good. Who knew what might happen at the typewriter? Before going up to the flat I went into the square, played hop-scotch in it just as it was, with no fountain.
Nothing changes or leaves its place, only we forget it. Life beats us all, or we get beaten by it, I feel there is a choice with us. When we are not afraid to leave it with a WHAM, we can never allow ourselves be undone or out-done by the condemnation to life. Irrespective of our situations, the will and zeal cannot be sedated unless we let the rot to set in. Not ever at the cost of turning into insensitive brutes, fearlessly yet consciously sensitively dealing with pain and suffering, there is always that trail in the wood that leads us out of it. Guided by the metaphors, we can always find our way out. They are always there, only patiently tranquil steps can guide us to them.
‘But with people you never know straightaway what does what. Maybe launching them did launch you but you don’t know it yet.’
...........
I was waiting for something now and the waiting was pleasant. I was waiting for the self inside me to come forward to the boundaries from which it had long ago withdrawn. Life would be less quiet and more dangerous, life is risky on the borders. Gillian Vole and Delia Swallow live in safer places. Come, I said to the self inside me. Come out and take your chance. After staring at the blank paper for a very long time I wrote: The fountain in the square isn’t there. Well, I thought, it’s not much but it’s a beginning.
If life is a meaningless exercise in futility, its not only that. If life is all cozy and comfortable journey through a utopian garden of ephemeral and brilliant resplendence, one must only be foolish to presume that. If life is all spirituality and depth, then we must all have been born saints to survive a single day in here. Life is all of them combined and at the same time, nothing from among them best describes it, its something entirely different. Our lexicon has supplied us with a word, ‘Enigma’ and there is nothing more worthy to honor this word by eschewing its very essence. It’s okay to feel burdened in this hub-bub called life but resilience is better than slavery to hopeless desolateness. The human condition wherein we reside, the quest for all answers may stall the very human movement that we are obliged to espouse. The symbols are all there if only we let for once our egotism wither away and not block our inquisitive selves and intrigue doesn’t die. Perhaps, for once, we don’t let it to.
The turtles would be swimming, swimming. It had been a good thing to do and not a foolish one. Thinking about the turtles I could feel the action of their swimming, the muscle contractions that drove the flippers through the green water. All they had was themselves but they would keep going until they found what was in them to find. In them was the place they were swimming to, and at the end of their swimming it would loom up out of the sea, real, solid, no illusion. They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming.
...........
They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming. I was in my ocean, this was the only ocean there was for me, the dry streets of London and my square without a fountain. No one could make me freer by putting me somewhere else. I had as much as the turtles: myself. At least I too could die on the way to where I wanted to be.
Nevertheless, metaphors adorn the journeys that we undertake like nothing else. They embellish the very canvas of life with their majestic splendor like guiding stars. And there awareness is as much entrenched inside us as much as we are human. It’s the veneer of doubt and defeat which spreads its tentacles over our conscious best and at times its spread is complete. Although fortuitously do they re-appear but they never left us in the first place. But in their mystery and sudden appearance and catching us unawares lies their defining beauties and perhaps that is also how it should remain always.
It doesn’t take much to decipher the power of a symbol that adorns our existence. GR – despite the current hiccup and hopeless uncertainty of potentially losing it, is a trough holding the elixir of sustenance, at least for my despondent soul. In-describable and Un-definable precisely, as every metaphor but amenable to easy revelation to those who feel it. Feeling more close to the denizens of GR and distant to the meaninglessness of confusing bashings of life, aloof to the world that is, is the sanest thing to do in the presence of this symbol. The strength gained shall be lasting, self-sustaining and propagating, is what I believe in with all my might.
The moment a symbol enters the realm of our beings and captures our imagination, it is given a new life of its own which can be entirely original and distinct from its previous identity or at least it accrues additional massive meanings. The reality is nothing but actually only our own version of perceptions of the very same things, potentially differently envisioned in other’s eyes. Even truth is seldom absolute, its rather our very own version of it. The point that I am driving at is the utter vacuousness of freckles that bound us at the behest of these ‘realities’, ‘truths’ and the ghosts of past. The blinking visions when we experience our perfect releases from the chains of time, of space, of mind, of traditions, customs, religion, gender, ideology… how beautiful to envision its sustenance, eternal sustenance; ultimate freedom from all which brings us even microscopically closer to the dungeon. Release, Break-Free, Radicalize! Let’s imagine the Sisyphus happy…..
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
...........
Oh yes, I thought, feeling something good just round the corner of my mind: just be all the way in it and you’re all right. Just let go of everything like a falling star. The far-away ones, when you see their light it’s already happened millions of years ago. This too, my brief light, maybe it had flashed across the darkness long long ago. Not my light, just a light. Now I was the one to be it, to flash across the darkness with it. Somebody else’s turn next. Nothing to be selfish about, be it while it’s you and then let go.
So shrieked Sartre, “Man is condemned to be free”. This condemnation is as difficult to imagine as it is obvious and plausible. Freedom as condemnation is as real a marriage of the incompatible that is lasting, nevertheless. Such is the travesty of modern man, he seems always in chains and yet it’s the freedom’s cross he bears across his breast. Life is a bondage where man is free. Free in incarceration; its his condemnation. Absurd as it sounds, absurd as it feels, absurd as it appears and even absurd in its surreptitiousness, that is how it is. No condemnation is overtly sweet in the plebeian parlance, neither is this one. Again, absurd as it is, the very condemnation replete with visible misery and desperation hides in its bosom, satiation, fulfillment and if I may, happiness and joy even. Nothing but absurd and absurdly so.
“I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself. Very good. Wonderful.”
A tight-rope walk is what life is akin to. Untrained and uninitiated, its us who are thrown over this stretch of string. Well if we ignore the involuntary accidents, does everyone of us end up on the other side? Even from among those who do end up on the other side, how many manage it meaningfully? Is it possible for a tight rope walker to be free all the time, fearlessly free? How can fear ever leave the one whose every step can mean whether he will retain the choice for the next one? Never abandoned by fear, how can he be free? So, does everyone who make it on the other side, finish up the tight rope walk? What good is the crossing if it is ugly and replete with wriggling and slips galore, sissy and wet with nothing but frets and catcalls? To hide in nooks and crannies, pusillanimously writhing through the sieves and selfishly treading over, is not finishing. Its not merely the crossing over but the manner of doing so that matters. In Actual reality, its hard to imagine anyone more freer than a tight rope walker; he has gotten rid of the greatest impediment to freedom, fear. Right within our condemnation, lies our freedom, either we must succesfully cross over, or fall with a bang...
To live with a yowl and die with a WHAM!
Falling in fear is simply dying. But the glory lies in fearlessly, successfully carrying out to completion, that tight rope walk or even merely attempting it fearlessly. Completion is glory but even falling to death in the pursuance is brilliantly scintillating. By being born in this maze, we are condemned till the eternity of our lives. But its not that we are ever condemned just for the sake of it, to be condemned. The freedom that is inevitably and inextricably tied to this condemnation, rather gilds the condemnation, often loses its sheen in the 'business' of life. Freedom is the yoke of human condition and it feeds on the best that each one of us has to offer, nothing short of the best can sustain it. Death of course is inevitable and so is pain that accompanies man in life but freedom always has a knack of shining through the futility, is at all times welcoming with its accouterments of metaphors, signals and signs, whether we are prepared or languishing in our tepid, despondent languor is another matter.
This morning near the bus stop by a tree a dead cat said hello to me. There he was, he too had gone into winter with a wham. He looked as if he’d been flying high until he was brought down. I’ve never seen such a lively-looking dead cat.
...........
A grey stripy tom he was with a head like a Roman senator, one eye open, one eye shut. His whole corpse seemed expressive of the WHAM! when his life met his death. He looked as if he’d been one hundred per cent alive until the lorry closed his account in the flower of his tomcathood and his mortal remains were cheerful rather than depressing. To live with a yowl and die with a WHAM!
The cajoling metaphors can be the turtles that simultaneously piqued William G. and Neaera H. Sea-turtles, eternally attuned, to the lengthy sea journeys stretching over thousands of miles of dark, deep seas and not to the zoo aquariums they belong. The improbable thought of re-installing them back to their original homes, suddenly assumes willful yet involuntary exigency and re-defines the future lives of reluctantly enthusiastic protagonists.
Then it doesn’t seem hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind. And when they can’t see the sun, what then? Their vision isn’t good enough for star sights. Do they go by smell, taste, faith?
In a single moment of brilliant surprise, a symbol expresses itself and initiates its beholders into concretely real action, a subtle tumult that potentially extricates the two freckled souls from the throes of rusted pasts and into the intuitive brilliance, that is now. To fearlessly ‘hope’ for nothing and yet being conscious to everything. Nothing sensational happens that transforms everything in one sway but sure streaks of energy and freshness, of novel agility are felt in the very same common place lives that they previously led.
Something very slowly, very dimly has been working in my mind and now is clear to me: there are no incidences, there are only coincidences.
Finally, freedom is felt even in the presence of trenchant condemnation whose acerbic grip is loosened. The very conundrum of hum-drum life that they traversed in, didn’t seem bothersome and taxing any longer. It was all the same but the change was inside them and they just did not care any more. Any of this cannot be explained or deciphered mathematically in any greater detail but can only be marveled at in surprised awe. And it must remain so if it has to retain its power as a symbol.
Camden Town is the windiest tube station I know. Coming up on the escalator with my hair flying I felt as if I was coming out of a dark place and into the light, then I laughed because that’s what I was actually doing.
.............
Nothing was different or better and I didn’t think I was either but I didn’t mind being alive at the moment. After all who knew what might happen?
............
Between now and then were all kinds of minutes, all of them good. Who knew what might happen at the typewriter? Before going up to the flat I went into the square, played hop-scotch in it just as it was, with no fountain.
Nothing changes or leaves its place, only we forget it. Life beats us all, or we get beaten by it, I feel there is a choice with us. When we are not afraid to leave it with a WHAM, we can never allow ourselves be undone or out-done by the condemnation to life. Irrespective of our situations, the will and zeal cannot be sedated unless we let the rot to set in. Not ever at the cost of turning into insensitive brutes, fearlessly yet consciously sensitively dealing with pain and suffering, there is always that trail in the wood that leads us out of it. Guided by the metaphors, we can always find our way out. They are always there, only patiently tranquil steps can guide us to them.
‘But with people you never know straightaway what does what. Maybe launching them did launch you but you don’t know it yet.’
...........
I was waiting for something now and the waiting was pleasant. I was waiting for the self inside me to come forward to the boundaries from which it had long ago withdrawn. Life would be less quiet and more dangerous, life is risky on the borders. Gillian Vole and Delia Swallow live in safer places. Come, I said to the self inside me. Come out and take your chance. After staring at the blank paper for a very long time I wrote: The fountain in the square isn’t there. Well, I thought, it’s not much but it’s a beginning.
If life is a meaningless exercise in futility, its not only that. If life is all cozy and comfortable journey through a utopian garden of ephemeral and brilliant resplendence, one must only be foolish to presume that. If life is all spirituality and depth, then we must all have been born saints to survive a single day in here. Life is all of them combined and at the same time, nothing from among them best describes it, its something entirely different. Our lexicon has supplied us with a word, ‘Enigma’ and there is nothing more worthy to honor this word by eschewing its very essence. It’s okay to feel burdened in this hub-bub called life but resilience is better than slavery to hopeless desolateness. The human condition wherein we reside, the quest for all answers may stall the very human movement that we are obliged to espouse. The symbols are all there if only we let for once our egotism wither away and not block our inquisitive selves and intrigue doesn’t die. Perhaps, for once, we don’t let it to.
The turtles would be swimming, swimming. It had been a good thing to do and not a foolish one. Thinking about the turtles I could feel the action of their swimming, the muscle contractions that drove the flippers through the green water. All they had was themselves but they would keep going until they found what was in them to find. In them was the place they were swimming to, and at the end of their swimming it would loom up out of the sea, real, solid, no illusion. They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming.
...........
They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming. I was in my ocean, this was the only ocean there was for me, the dry streets of London and my square without a fountain. No one could make me freer by putting me somewhere else. I had as much as the turtles: myself. At least I too could die on the way to where I wanted to be.
Nevertheless, metaphors adorn the journeys that we undertake like nothing else. They embellish the very canvas of life with their majestic splendor like guiding stars. And there awareness is as much entrenched inside us as much as we are human. It’s the veneer of doubt and defeat which spreads its tentacles over our conscious best and at times its spread is complete. Although fortuitously do they re-appear but they never left us in the first place. But in their mystery and sudden appearance and catching us unawares lies their defining beauties and perhaps that is also how it should remain always.
It doesn’t take much to decipher the power of a symbol that adorns our existence. GR – despite the current hiccup and hopeless uncertainty of potentially losing it, is a trough holding the elixir of sustenance, at least for my despondent soul. In-describable and Un-definable precisely, as every metaphor but amenable to easy revelation to those who feel it. Feeling more close to the denizens of GR and distant to the meaninglessness of confusing bashings of life, aloof to the world that is, is the sanest thing to do in the presence of this symbol. The strength gained shall be lasting, self-sustaining and propagating, is what I believe in with all my might.
The moment a symbol enters the realm of our beings and captures our imagination, it is given a new life of its own which can be entirely original and distinct from its previous identity or at least it accrues additional massive meanings. The reality is nothing but actually only our own version of perceptions of the very same things, potentially differently envisioned in other’s eyes. Even truth is seldom absolute, its rather our very own version of it. The point that I am driving at is the utter vacuousness of freckles that bound us at the behest of these ‘realities’, ‘truths’ and the ghosts of past. The blinking visions when we experience our perfect releases from the chains of time, of space, of mind, of traditions, customs, religion, gender, ideology… how beautiful to envision its sustenance, eternal sustenance; ultimate freedom from all which brings us even microscopically closer to the dungeon. Release, Break-Free, Radicalize! Let’s imagine the Sisyphus happy…..
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
...........
Oh yes, I thought, feeling something good just round the corner of my mind: just be all the way in it and you’re all right. Just let go of everything like a falling star. The far-away ones, when you see their light it’s already happened millions of years ago. This too, my brief light, maybe it had flashed across the darkness long long ago. Not my light, just a light. Now I was the one to be it, to flash across the darkness with it. Somebody else’s turn next. Nothing to be selfish about, be it while it’s you and then let go.
September 23, 2013
A bewildering story in its simplicity. I cupped its crystalline wine glass with both hands, soft.
Delicate in its structure it could crack without event. The thin line was likely to traverse in a snaked spread.
I felt the first skein separate towards the end. Many of my preconceptions tumbled, then the glass fall apart in my palms. Small pieces reflected light with gem-shine.
Although a slow reader, and following Kris's advisory warnings to read this book slow, I finished within two days. Smooth as the syrup of a fine sherry, as quiet a read as William's, Stoner, the pages continued turning.The notes of the music so soft I remained unaware of their passing. The prose so simple it mystified the yearn to lavish, reread, to frolic and rest within the beauty of its style.Yet Hoban's magic is further mystified beyond our view by revealing the stored wealth of wisdom we visit novels for.There are no raised glasses, no toasts, only soft astonishments.
Strange, even while typing this review with all the references to a lack of encumbrances, the writing surface clear as a sheet of water, that the story is based on two lonely people coming together to steal and free grown sea turtles from the zoo and set them free in the ocean. I expected a slight comedic adventure and a bumpy ride on a vehicle this metaphorically transparent.
A solitary man and woman in their mid-forties, each live alone in their small apartments. Consumed by daily obsessive repetition each has cocooned themselves within the safety of an inward life with little awareness of others and an unspoken need to have time pass. She, never married and childless had written children's books and has as her companion a water-beetle in an aquarium in her apartment and in the park center a fountain which should be there but isn't. He is divorced with grown children who do not see him. He has no companionship but for the occasional meaningless one night flings. He works at a bookstore. Neither makes their way out of their own interiority while the turtle keeper at the Aquarium at the London Zoo cares for the large turtles in the small encased area and maintains a life philosophy that he, "Doesn't mind living."
This was a narrative which might have mis-stepped a number of times. It didn't travel where I predicted nor did it twist when or how I thought it might. In lesser hands this story would have shrunk down to a predictable heap of sentiment. In Hoban's hands it evolved into a profound exploration of-as the sea turtles had within them the need to swim fourteen hundred miles to a small island they knew nothing of to breed-the human soul too having built within it the unexplained need to dive within and locate who and what it is and therefore what it needs to do. It awaits discovery and release for its forward journey to its own island, amidst life's vacuous distractions and bone-chilled fears, the lurking false temptations.
Hoban has no need to point and exclaim that is what is being told or indicate the sweat and skills made to look so easy. A day after finishing the book, though the book had nor still has no intention of finishing with me, I understood that he accomplished possibly one of the more daring events in literature, illustrating that life is hope.
I recommend this book for anyone who carries that within them or would like to. I thank Dolors and Kris of GR for leading me to this book and highly urge any reader to read their exceptional reviews of, Turtle Diary, both of which I have filed in my folder, To Keep Forever.
July 20, 2016
This is a quiet and charming little book, the kind of thing you'd imagine Wes Anderson to adapt into a film, awkward and patently-patiently low-key. Two middle-aged, flailing people in London plot, quite independently at first, to kidnap sea turtles from the zoo and set them free in the ocean. Then they meet, quite by accident. That's about it. The story doesn't require much more. In fact, it's real beauty lies in the simplistic way that it behaves: the novel does nothing that you want it to do. It's softly wild and inchoate and obeys nothing and shaves off anticipation by acting entirely counter-intuitive. It's a lovely unlove story.
June 1, 2020
Hayvanat bahçeleriyle iki defam yolum kesişti. İkincisinde sadece kapısında bekledim. Diğerleri oradan oraya koşturup, hangi kafesin önünde fotoğraf çektireceklerine karar veremez ve ellerindeki çerezleri birbirleriyle yarışırcasına kafeslere atarken; hissettiğim tek şey bulantıydı.
Eğlenceli bulmadım, öğretici de değildi asla.. Kafeslerin karşısında biraz daha uzun vakit geçirsem, daha sık gitsem farklı hisseder miyim bilmiyorum..
.
İki gün önce 3 kişiyle tanıştım.
William G. 45 yaşında, kitapçıda çalışıyor, iki kızı var ama onları en son ne zaman gördü bilmiyorum. 3 yıl? Mümkün..
Neaera H. 43 yaşında, hiç evlenmedi, çocuk kitapları yazıyor.. Kendisine çok yakın hissettim. Belki masası benim kadar dağınık olduğundan.
Ve George Fairbairn, hayvanat bahçesinde baş bakıcı , onu çok sık görmedim ama varlığının hep farkındaydım.
Sonra öykülerini okumaya başladım, o üç kişinin ve üç kaplumbağanın.
Aklına hayvanat bahçesindeki üç kaplumbağayı okyanusa kavuşturmayı koyan üç kişinin öyküsünü..
.
Russell Hoban pek çok türde eser vermiş bir yazar. Ve ben kendisini Kaplumbağa Günlüğü ile tanımış oldum. Öyle sakindi ki cümleleri, pek çok ufak ama size göz kırpan detaylarla birlikte.. Her karakterin gördüğü ve düşündükleri diğer karakterlere de yansıyor sanki, birbirleriyle konuşmadan hem de..
William G ve Neaera H’nin içlerindeki boşluklar, onların gözlerinden ayrı ayrı anlatılıyor. Bana bu kitaptaki her sayfanın iyi geldiğini, içimde bir yerlere seslendiğini söyleyebilirim.. Hem de şefkatle..
.
Altını çizdiğim onca cümleden bir tanesini de şuraya iliştireyim:
‘Bir an merak ettim: Ya üzerinde benim adımın olduğu bir taş olsaydı? Sonra dedim ya bütün taşların üzerinde benim adım olsaydı? Derken düşündüm ki her taşın ismi benim içimde. Her taşın ismini söyleyemem ama hepsi içimde.’
Eğlenceli bulmadım, öğretici de değildi asla.. Kafeslerin karşısında biraz daha uzun vakit geçirsem, daha sık gitsem farklı hisseder miyim bilmiyorum..
.
İki gün önce 3 kişiyle tanıştım.
William G. 45 yaşında, kitapçıda çalışıyor, iki kızı var ama onları en son ne zaman gördü bilmiyorum. 3 yıl? Mümkün..
Neaera H. 43 yaşında, hiç evlenmedi, çocuk kitapları yazıyor.. Kendisine çok yakın hissettim. Belki masası benim kadar dağınık olduğundan.
Ve George Fairbairn, hayvanat bahçesinde baş bakıcı , onu çok sık görmedim ama varlığının hep farkındaydım.
Sonra öykülerini okumaya başladım, o üç kişinin ve üç kaplumbağanın.
Aklına hayvanat bahçesindeki üç kaplumbağayı okyanusa kavuşturmayı koyan üç kişinin öyküsünü..
.
Russell Hoban pek çok türde eser vermiş bir yazar. Ve ben kendisini Kaplumbağa Günlüğü ile tanımış oldum. Öyle sakindi ki cümleleri, pek çok ufak ama size göz kırpan detaylarla birlikte.. Her karakterin gördüğü ve düşündükleri diğer karakterlere de yansıyor sanki, birbirleriyle konuşmadan hem de..
William G ve Neaera H’nin içlerindeki boşluklar, onların gözlerinden ayrı ayrı anlatılıyor. Bana bu kitaptaki her sayfanın iyi geldiğini, içimde bir yerlere seslendiğini söyleyebilirim.. Hem de şefkatle..
.
Altını çizdiğim onca cümleden bir tanesini de şuraya iliştireyim:
‘Bir an merak ettim: Ya üzerinde benim adımın olduğu bir taş olsaydı? Sonra dedim ya bütün taşların üzerinde benim adım olsaydı? Derken düşündüm ki her taşın ismi benim içimde. Her taşın ismini söyleyemem ama hepsi içimde.’
January 10, 2021
Tavsiyesine, zevkine güvendiğim @ilknurrcakr ın önerisi olan Kaplumbağa Günlüğü'ne bayıldım.
Yayınevini öncelikle güzel kapak tasarımı ve ince editörlüğü için tebrik ediyorum. Şahane bir çeviri olduğunu da belirtmek isterim.
Gelelim kitaba, yazar değişik bir kurgu denemiş ve buna bayıldım, birbirinden tamamen alakasız üç ayrı kişi bir anda hayatımıza giriyor. Biz esasen ikisinin ağzından, bakış açısından okuyoruz durumu, üçüncü kişi ilerleyen sahfada dahil oluyor.
William ve Neare'nin asla kesişmez dediğimiz hayatlarında, kendilerini, dertlerini, uğradıkları düş kırıklıklarını, vazgeçişleri, geçmişi, gelecek kaygısını salmanın yerine geçecek gibi düşünerek hayvanat bahçesindeki kaplumbağaları okyanusa salma hayallerine kapılıyorlar. Bu hayale ikisi birbirinden asla haberdar olmadan, asla aynı anda olmayacak şekilde ama birebir aynı zamanda aynı şekilde hareket ediyorlar. Derken bu ikiliye kaplumbağaların bakıcısı George dahil oluyor ve o da aynı hayale kapılmış ve bu hayali eyleme dökmeye çoktan razı.
Bu denli olağandıışı, sıradanlıktan uzak bir hikayenin, böylesi sade, net ve akıcı anlatabilmek cidden ustalık. Satırlar su gibi akarken kendinizden, hayatı, hayalleri, sorgulamanızdan çok parça bulacaksınız.
Yepyeni bir yayınevi tanıyayım, değişik ve güzel bir okuma yapayım derseniz buyrunuz...
Keyifli okumalar diliyorum!
#readingismycardio #aslihanneokudu #okudumbitti #bookstagram #okumakiptiladır #kimneokudu #kitapyolda #kitapengüzelhediye #kitaplariyikivar #kütüphanemdenyansıyanlar #okuyorum #kitap #kitaptavsiyesi #okugönder #2021okumalarım #okuyorum #okuyorumöyleysevarım #okumakgüzeldir #neokudum #kaplumbağagünlüğü #yediyayınları #russellhoban #yazarlarkitaplar #okuryorumu #yazarlarkitaplar #roman #edebiyat
Yayınevini öncelikle güzel kapak tasarımı ve ince editörlüğü için tebrik ediyorum. Şahane bir çeviri olduğunu da belirtmek isterim.
Gelelim kitaba, yazar değişik bir kurgu denemiş ve buna bayıldım, birbirinden tamamen alakasız üç ayrı kişi bir anda hayatımıza giriyor. Biz esasen ikisinin ağzından, bakış açısından okuyoruz durumu, üçüncü kişi ilerleyen sahfada dahil oluyor.
William ve Neare'nin asla kesişmez dediğimiz hayatlarında, kendilerini, dertlerini, uğradıkları düş kırıklıklarını, vazgeçişleri, geçmişi, gelecek kaygısını salmanın yerine geçecek gibi düşünerek hayvanat bahçesindeki kaplumbağaları okyanusa salma hayallerine kapılıyorlar. Bu hayale ikisi birbirinden asla haberdar olmadan, asla aynı anda olmayacak şekilde ama birebir aynı zamanda aynı şekilde hareket ediyorlar. Derken bu ikiliye kaplumbağaların bakıcısı George dahil oluyor ve o da aynı hayale kapılmış ve bu hayali eyleme dökmeye çoktan razı.
Bu denli olağandıışı, sıradanlıktan uzak bir hikayenin, böylesi sade, net ve akıcı anlatabilmek cidden ustalık. Satırlar su gibi akarken kendinizden, hayatı, hayalleri, sorgulamanızdan çok parça bulacaksınız.
Yepyeni bir yayınevi tanıyayım, değişik ve güzel bir okuma yapayım derseniz buyrunuz...
Keyifli okumalar diliyorum!
#readingismycardio #aslihanneokudu #okudumbitti #bookstagram #okumakiptiladır #kimneokudu #kitapyolda #kitapengüzelhediye #kitaplariyikivar #kütüphanemdenyansıyanlar #okuyorum #kitap #kitaptavsiyesi #okugönder #2021okumalarım #okuyorum #okuyorumöyleysevarım #okumakgüzeldir #neokudum #kaplumbağagünlüğü #yediyayınları #russellhoban #yazarlarkitaplar #okuryorumu #yazarlarkitaplar #roman #edebiyat
Read
August 5, 2025william ve neaera, ikisi de kendi hayatında biraz yalnızlar.. aralarındaki ilişki ne tam dostluk ne de aşk. daha çok aynı sessizliğe bakmak gibi. birbirlerini değiştirmeye çalışmadan yalnızca yan yana duruyorlar. hayvanat bahçesindeki dev kaplumbağaları denize bırakmak istiyorlar. bu ilk başta, kulağa çocuksu ya da romantik gelebilir ancak bana göre o kadar insanî geldi ki. çünkü bazen bizler de sıkışıp kalıyoruz ve özgür kalan bir kaplumbağa, sanki bizden bir parçayı da alıp götürüyor.
kitabı bitirdiğimde büyük bir duygu patlaması yaşamadım, yalnızca huzurlu hissettim. bu da benim için yeterli.
kitabı bitirdiğimde büyük bir duygu patlaması yaşamadım, yalnızca huzurlu hissettim. bu da benim için yeterli.
March 8, 2025
An inventive, understated exploration of confinement and liberation, both literal and existential, told through the lives of two solitary individuals who bond over a shared desire to free three sea turtles, Rumble Fish style, from the London Zoo.
William G., a children’s book illustrator grappling with the quiet despair of his post-divorce life, and Neaera H., a writer of whimsical animal tales who feels equally disconnected from the world around her, are drawn together by their fascination with the turtles.
Hoban captures the peculiar rhythms of urban isolation when William muses “Sometimes I think I’m not really here, that I’m just a figment of my own imagination.” The turtles, ancient and enigmatic, become a mirror for the characters’ own struggles, their slow, deliberate movements a stark contrast to the frenetic pace of human life. The novel’s humor often emerges from this juxtaposition, as when Neaera dryly observes, “Turtles don’t have midlife crises. They just keep plodding along, which is probably why they outlive us.”
The plot, seemingly straightforward, gains momentum as William and Neaera conspire to liberate the turtles, an act that becomes a metaphor for their own yearning to break free from the shells of their routines. The heist itself is both tense and absurd, a delicate balance of suspense and farce that Hoban handles with a light touch.
Along the way, the story is punctuated by moments of quiet drama: Neaera’s encounter with a stranger who leaves her a cryptic note, William’s awkward attempt to reconnect with his estranged daughter, and a surreal sequence in which Neaera imagines herself as a turtle navigating the streets of London. Hoban’s wit shines in passages like Neaera’s reflection, “The world is full of people who don’t know what they want and want it terribly.”
The turtles, with their ancient wisdom and unhurried grace, serve as a foil to the characters’ restless discontent, their slow movements a sign that life doesn’t always have to be a sprint. One can’t help but smile at the irony of two humans, so tangled in their own existential shells, plotting to give turtles a new lease on life. It’s a classic case of the shell-bound helping the shell-bound.
Hoban, an American expatriate who made London his home, infuses the novel with a distinctly British sensibility, blending existential musings with dry humor and a deep affection for the city’s quirks. Turtle Diary brings to mind the works of Iris Murdoch and Penelope Fitzgerald, with its philosophical undertones and keen psychological insight, yet it remains wholly original in its peculiar charm. The book’s structure, alternating between William’s and Neaera’s perspectives, mirrors the fragmented nature of their lives, while the interspersed diary entries lend an intimate, almost confessional quality to the text.
One minor misstep lies in the occasional over-reliance on symbolism, as when Neaera’s turtle fantasies veer into the overly literal. Still, the novel’s central message—about the courage it takes to break free from self-imposed limitations—rings true.
Readers who appreciate introspective, character-driven stories with a touch of the absurd will find much to savor here. Turtle Diary is a quiet celebration of the small, brave acts that can change the course of a life, proving that sometimes, you have to stick your neck out to get anywhere. And if you’re lucky, you might just avoid getting snapped at by life’s sharper edges.
William G., a children’s book illustrator grappling with the quiet despair of his post-divorce life, and Neaera H., a writer of whimsical animal tales who feels equally disconnected from the world around her, are drawn together by their fascination with the turtles.
Hoban captures the peculiar rhythms of urban isolation when William muses “Sometimes I think I’m not really here, that I’m just a figment of my own imagination.” The turtles, ancient and enigmatic, become a mirror for the characters’ own struggles, their slow, deliberate movements a stark contrast to the frenetic pace of human life. The novel’s humor often emerges from this juxtaposition, as when Neaera dryly observes, “Turtles don’t have midlife crises. They just keep plodding along, which is probably why they outlive us.”
The plot, seemingly straightforward, gains momentum as William and Neaera conspire to liberate the turtles, an act that becomes a metaphor for their own yearning to break free from the shells of their routines. The heist itself is both tense and absurd, a delicate balance of suspense and farce that Hoban handles with a light touch.
Along the way, the story is punctuated by moments of quiet drama: Neaera’s encounter with a stranger who leaves her a cryptic note, William’s awkward attempt to reconnect with his estranged daughter, and a surreal sequence in which Neaera imagines herself as a turtle navigating the streets of London. Hoban’s wit shines in passages like Neaera’s reflection, “The world is full of people who don’t know what they want and want it terribly.”
The turtles, with their ancient wisdom and unhurried grace, serve as a foil to the characters’ restless discontent, their slow movements a sign that life doesn’t always have to be a sprint. One can’t help but smile at the irony of two humans, so tangled in their own existential shells, plotting to give turtles a new lease on life. It’s a classic case of the shell-bound helping the shell-bound.
Hoban, an American expatriate who made London his home, infuses the novel with a distinctly British sensibility, blending existential musings with dry humor and a deep affection for the city’s quirks. Turtle Diary brings to mind the works of Iris Murdoch and Penelope Fitzgerald, with its philosophical undertones and keen psychological insight, yet it remains wholly original in its peculiar charm. The book’s structure, alternating between William’s and Neaera’s perspectives, mirrors the fragmented nature of their lives, while the interspersed diary entries lend an intimate, almost confessional quality to the text.
One minor misstep lies in the occasional over-reliance on symbolism, as when Neaera’s turtle fantasies veer into the overly literal. Still, the novel’s central message—about the courage it takes to break free from self-imposed limitations—rings true.
Readers who appreciate introspective, character-driven stories with a touch of the absurd will find much to savor here. Turtle Diary is a quiet celebration of the small, brave acts that can change the course of a life, proving that sometimes, you have to stick your neck out to get anywhere. And if you’re lucky, you might just avoid getting snapped at by life’s sharper edges.
September 25, 2015
Thanks to Rod for recommending this to me. I'd seen the film (at least 20 years ago) before reading the book and, as I recall, the film was pretty much true to the book, which is somewhat unusual in my experience.
April 9, 2022
Lovely little novel about freeing turtles, and finding love. Quirky and philosophical, and heartwarming. A good way to spend a Saturday!
December 22, 2021
My experience with Russell Hoban's work to date has consisted of (1) ritualistic annual childhoood viewings of Jim Henson's TV adaptation of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, (2) an aborted attempt at reading Riddley Walker some years ago (and by attempt, I mean I recall flipping through the first few pages and thinking ‘Nope, not today’), and (3) reading this book. So, while I’m by no means an expert on Hoban's oeuvre, I suspect that, like all writers of fiction with a voluminous bibliography to their names, he had an imagination that seemingly knew no bounds. This allowed him to successfully write across many genres, which is no easy feat.
Turtle Diary is a novel deceptive in its simplicity, similar to how Anne Tyler's novels can be when she's at her quirky best. I was also reminded of the timeless yet off-kilter nature of Rachel Ingalls’ novel Mrs. Caliban (coincidentally Ingalls, like Hoban, was also an American expatriate who lived in London). Poignant and deep in its characterization, the book virtually turns its own pages while the reader watches as through the rain-streaked window of a commuter train, hurtling along tracks that rattle with the comforting familiarity born of repetition. A novel like this only succeeds when its author possesses penetrating insight into the human condition. Hoban clearly had this; it’s almost as if he’s standing waist-deep in the coursing river of our collective unconscious, calmly reciting a story of what we already inherently know, but in a slyly compelling way that entices us to listen once again.
Of course one can consume too much of this type of literature, as I found years ago after tearing through countless Anne Tyler novels. I suddenly knew that I’d read enough and did not need to read any more. But every once in a while it’s still good to come upon another wistful, clever novel wreathed in pathos that strives without showing its effort to map out how many people tend to fumble through life, colliding with and bouncing off each other, maybe rolling parallel for a while, but always remaining solitary in their search for meaning. Who wants to read that sort of thing all the time, though…
Turtle Diary is a novel deceptive in its simplicity, similar to how Anne Tyler's novels can be when she's at her quirky best. I was also reminded of the timeless yet off-kilter nature of Rachel Ingalls’ novel Mrs. Caliban (coincidentally Ingalls, like Hoban, was also an American expatriate who lived in London). Poignant and deep in its characterization, the book virtually turns its own pages while the reader watches as through the rain-streaked window of a commuter train, hurtling along tracks that rattle with the comforting familiarity born of repetition. A novel like this only succeeds when its author possesses penetrating insight into the human condition. Hoban clearly had this; it’s almost as if he’s standing waist-deep in the coursing river of our collective unconscious, calmly reciting a story of what we already inherently know, but in a slyly compelling way that entices us to listen once again.
Of course one can consume too much of this type of literature, as I found years ago after tearing through countless Anne Tyler novels. I suddenly knew that I’d read enough and did not need to read any more. But every once in a while it’s still good to come upon another wistful, clever novel wreathed in pathos that strives without showing its effort to map out how many people tend to fumble through life, colliding with and bouncing off each other, maybe rolling parallel for a while, but always remaining solitary in their search for meaning. Who wants to read that sort of thing all the time, though…
October 22, 2019
Rereading. What a beautiful novel. The copy I read this time, the NYRB edition, has blurbs by John Fowles calling it a human fable and one by The Times calling it a fantasy. But it seems to me a novel positing shining possibility.
November 21, 2018
Thanks to Kris for recommending this book. I never would have known about it otherwise.
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