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Season On The Plain
Publisher: New York: Penguin, 1975. Date of Publication: 1976 Binding: paperback Edition: Condition: Good Description: 0140040226 This book re-creates the dynamics of animal and plant life on an African plain............ initials inside front cover
313 pages, Hardcover
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 18, 2023
‘The life of a wild animal always has a tragic end.’ This quote by Ernest Thompson Seaton, who wrote Wild Animals I Have Known, has always stuck with me. This book is a 313-page testament to that notion. The central character of the book is nature, complex and terrible, indifferent to our attempts to understand despite mountains of scientific facts.
The author provides plenty of facts from the lives of microbes, plants and animals to the physical landscape of soil, rock and water, scorched or drenched by capricious weather cycles. All are characters in the drama that unfolds on the plains of Africa during one seasonal cycle.
As rich as the book is in detail and invention (no human characters, rather using 4 individual animals as protagonists) I found it a little flat. The note of nature being red in tooth and claw is described in clinical, sometimes gruesome detail throughout. No sympathy is allowed for the characters. For example, just when you might feel compassion for an aging male lion on his last legs it’s revealed that in the past he has dispassionately eaten lion cubs when hungry.
On the plus side I learned a lot about what goes on in the Serengeti. As I’ve mentioned it is rich in detail. The writing occasionally rises to the poetic but sometimes feels self consciously so.
I started the book with high expectations but 3 out of 5 on my scale is ok.
The author provides plenty of facts from the lives of microbes, plants and animals to the physical landscape of soil, rock and water, scorched or drenched by capricious weather cycles. All are characters in the drama that unfolds on the plains of Africa during one seasonal cycle.
As rich as the book is in detail and invention (no human characters, rather using 4 individual animals as protagonists) I found it a little flat. The note of nature being red in tooth and claw is described in clinical, sometimes gruesome detail throughout. No sympathy is allowed for the characters. For example, just when you might feel compassion for an aging male lion on his last legs it’s revealed that in the past he has dispassionately eaten lion cubs when hungry.
On the plus side I learned a lot about what goes on in the Serengeti. As I’ve mentioned it is rich in detail. The writing occasionally rises to the poetic but sometimes feels self consciously so.
I started the book with high expectations but 3 out of 5 on my scale is ok.
July 27, 2019
Franklin Russell is my favorite natural history (NH) writer. Only a quarter way through this one but I can recognize another classic by him. Is there any other NH writer who regularly purges his writings of humans and their personal and geographical names? The only capital letters that appear in his books are at the beginning of sentences. Even when the reader is not consciously aware of this, he feels something different about what he's reading. It could repel or attract. Russell uses fictional techniques, he has individual animal characters, a lion, leopard, hyena, and baboon, all unnamed, yet he gives their personal histories,and enters their minds--or heads, if you don't think animals have minds.
Correct me if I'm wrong that this is a unique approach to NH writing, I would love to read other authors like this.
Correct me if I'm wrong that this is a unique approach to NH writing, I would love to read other authors like this.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews