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A Monstrous Commotion: The Mysteries of Loch Ness
Hardcover
Published July 5, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 3, 2026
Excellent, entertaining, packed with decent photos and drawings, and only slightly too detailed ;-)
A few otiose rhetorical flourishes, random facts and false cliffhangers, but fun to read. The slightly chatty style (on a firm foundation of footnotes) and deliberately involved feeling of the authorial voice — embracing each perspective and participant, treating them fairly and sympathetically, trying to enter in to their worlds and to the atmospheres around the Loch and the conferences and the press frenzies, etc — are very pleasant and fitting.
GW covers what needs to be covered, goes over things from several angles (helpful in keeping up with the twists and turns and parade of eccentrics), slips in multiple explanations and possibilities for most significant sightings/bits of evidence as he goes along, uses published and archival material to excellent effect, and implies rather than states his conclusions. That final chapter is all the more powerful for not being argued so much as insinuated! I hadn’t seen it coming (though a work published in 1968 had already laid it out very suggestively… true believers in Nessie will not like it, but it is what it is!)
A few otiose rhetorical flourishes, random facts and false cliffhangers, but fun to read. The slightly chatty style (on a firm foundation of footnotes) and deliberately involved feeling of the authorial voice — embracing each perspective and participant, treating them fairly and sympathetically, trying to enter in to their worlds and to the atmospheres around the Loch and the conferences and the press frenzies, etc — are very pleasant and fitting.
GW covers what needs to be covered, goes over things from several angles (helpful in keeping up with the twists and turns and parade of eccentrics), slips in multiple explanations and possibilities for most significant sightings/bits of evidence as he goes along, uses published and archival material to excellent effect, and implies rather than states his conclusions. That final chapter is all the more powerful for not being argued so much as insinuated! I hadn’t seen it coming (though a work published in 1968 had already laid it out very suggestively… true believers in Nessie will not like it, but it is what it is!)
February 10, 2026
I really enjoyed this detailed deep dive into the tale of the hunt for the Loch Ness monster. The author did a fantastic job of sharing the many different people involved and their perspectives.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews