Amazon.co.uk Review
Some years ago a girlfriend was trying to persuade me to go to Kenya with her. "But I'm terrified of snakes" I said. "Don't be daft" she replied, "no one sees a snake." On our second day we ran over a puff adder, a week later an unidentified green snake eyeballed me as I lay sunbathing near a lake and to round off a perfect holiday a spitting cobra reared up and spat at the car window. And yet I still insisted on visiting every snake park we came across. Which makes
The Snakebite Survivors' Club compulsory reading for someone like me.
Snakes occupy a peculiar position in the human psyche; in different cultures they have been associated with everything from birth to death, with liberal helpings of sex thrown in for good measure. Most of us are both fascinated and repelled by snakes and Jeremy Seal is no exception. He starts the book with an account of how he can't bring himself to go into the reptile house at London Zoo. Being a travel writer, Seal is clearly both certifiable and able to spot good copy when he sees it, so he naturally concludes that the only solution is to set off round the world in search of as many lethal snakes and those who have survived their bites as possible. Seal's journeys through America, Africa, Australia and India are every bit as engaging as you might expect from the man who wrote A Fez of the Heart--a book whose only failing was its badly punning title. Where Seal scores heavily is that he never becomes detached from his subject matter. So many travel writers tend to waltz imperiously though foreign parts, affecting an intimacy they never achieve. Even when Seal is talking history, myth or religion, he's never less than personal.
Seal's interest is more than curiosity, it's phobic and that's what makes it so compelling. Whether he's meeting the American woman who survived her husband's attempt to murder her with a rattle snake, or the Kilifi man who survived a black mamba or the suspiciously conveniently named Dundee--the Australian who shrugged off a taipan--you can sense his sub-text: "What would I have done?" and "Could I have survived?" The same feelings permeate the historical. When he retraces the steps of the first Australian to catch a taipan, you know that he's somehow expecting a snake to appear in the same place. And when it doesn't, like Seal, you are both relieved and disappointed. The Snakebite Survivors' Club is a rare mix of intelligence and whimsy, but don't for a minute think it will cure you of your fear of snakes. So if you're feeling faint-hearted, grab a copy and head for Ireland where--legend has it--there isn't a snake in sight. --John Crace
Review
A Fez of the Heart was such a tour de force that it was difficult to imagine Seal following up with anything half as good. But here it is: an imaginative and fascinating subject matter, well told, and a salutary reminder that travel writing is both about 'far away places' and recondite tales of extraordinary people that live next door. Take Glenn and Darlene Summerford Collins, Barbee Lane, Scottsboro, Alabama, USA. He's the local preacher at a converted gas station on Wood Coves Road where the handling of Satan's serpents forms an essential part of the service. Of course, Glenn is quite mad and decides to 'pop off' his wife, Darlene, using the one method that comes naturally to him, 'the poison of a serpent'. But snakes are not always 'evil'. In India the charismatic cobra is the totem of new life, much to the chagrin of the 19th-century European travellers. In Kenya, Seal visits a snake park (puff adders, gaboon vipers and vicious black mambas), which has the wonderful warning sign: 'Trespassers will be poisoned'. Readers beware... (Kirkus UK)
