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Amazon.co.uk Review
Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau is a pure delight, even for the most dedicated landlubbers. On April Fool's Day 1993, Raban set sail in his 35-foot ketch from "virtual reality" Seattle, to travel the 1,000 or so miles up the often turbulent and tricky Inside Passage to Alaska. Despite describing himself as "a timid, weedy, cerebral type, never more out of my element than when I'm at sea", he nevertheless "meant to go fishing for reflections and come back with a glittering haul". And glittering this is, for Raban writes with such vivid acuity and witty iconoclasm about charted and uncharted waters, actual, historical, anthropological, natural and personal--and much else besides. His constants as he threads his course through the fretwork of islands, narrows and passes are tracing Captain Vancouver's 1792 voyage in the Discovery; the Northwest Indians' tenacious relation to the sea that dominated their lives and was mirrored in their art; Edmund Burke's 1757 theory of the sublime (terror was the most necessary ingredient) and the consequent, ecstatic recording of the coastal landscape (not by Vancouver, who found it dull and gloomy, but by his snobbish young upper-class officers); Raban's father's death and its aftermath which interrupted his voyage; and, of course, the sea itself with its six basic movements: pitch, roll, yaw, heave, surge and sway.
Every page offers rewarding observations and colourful commentary: on the death of the great fisheries, the new tourism, a rereading of Shelley and Marcus Aurelius, bird flight, the rigours of outpost life and even indeed the origins of "nookie." All of this makes for an utterly engaging, generously questing, scholarly and richly pleasurable work. --Ruth Petrie
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'This is Raban at his best, which is saying a great deal' Ian McEwan
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An unorthodox but excellent book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Passage To Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning (Paperback)
This was a book that had an immediate appeal to me: I live in England, I have worked and lived in Seattle Wa., I love the Pacific North West and I have been to Juneau, Alaska. When I started the book, I wondered if this was a writer who thought that he was a better wordsmith than he actually is. But the more I got into the book, the more I appreciated his interlacing of his own voyage and his observations of the sea and the places he stops at with the voyage of Vancouver, and later, with his reflections about the death of his father. The writing about contemporary England (e.g., about 'estuary English') rang very true. The account of his father's death and funeral was poignant and authentic, although most English people would be a little reluctant to reveal family rifts on the printed page. The book has a sting in the tail in terms of the author's personal life. This is an unusual book but, by the time I finished it, I was convinced that the unorthodox formula worked.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'Passage to Juneau, is a bleak but often humourous log.,
By Justine (Devon England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Passage To Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning (Paperback)
Leaving Seattle on All Fool's Day 1993 Raban, a latecomer to sailing, sets out to explore the tortuous eccentricities of The Inside Passage north to Juneau in Alaska.He goes 'fishing for reflections.'As in the myths and legends of the Native Americans he studies and interprets Raban finds that when one leaves the apparent sureties of home and community strange and inxeplicable events can occur.Like the hero in some contemporary Greek tragedy signs and omens oppress him, illusion and self-delusion shadow him.Ghosts track him;the original tribes,the moody,bellicose English explorer Captain Vancouver with his recalcitrant crew,fur traders,gold diggers,timbermen, tourists.All leave their tracks but as time passes nature returns and silently covers their trails.Is this a pattern in the apparently all enveloping chaos?Raban has a sardonic,renaissance mind but also the necessary authorial skills required to make this a stylistic and narrative tour de force. Passage to Juneau is a personal log, a bleak but often humourous saga in which Raban charts and interprets his inner seascapes and attempts to pilot himself safely through the treacherous tides and shifting currents on which he sails.This is a masterpiece which goes on my shelf next to Peter Matthiessen's, 'The Snow Leopard', and Bruce Chatwin's,'In Patagonia'.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Make the time for this journey.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Passage To Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning (Paperback)
This fantastic book takes you on a journey through geographical, historical and emotional landscapes. It is a really enjoyable voyage, accompanying Jonathon Raban, to places lost in time and others ever changing. Read it!
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