The Snow Geese - Softcover

Fiennes, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679311661 ISBN 13: 9780679311669

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2003

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Every spring, millions of geese embark on an arduous three-thousand-mile migration from their winter quarters in the southern United States to their breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic. One year William Fiennes decided to go with them. Intrigued by what he’d read about the birds’ amazing annual journey, Fiennes was also desperate to emerge from a period of illness and from the belief that, at age twenty-six, his life had ground to a halt.

The story of his voyage turns out to be about a great deal more than geese. A blend of memoir, natural history, and travel writing, The Snow Geese is also about homecoming: the birds on their long homeward journey north, the romance of homecomings, the urge to leave home and the even stronger need to return. The arc of Fiennes’s extraordinary adventure is the backbone of a narrative rich in meditations on philosophy and natural science, and deeply perceptive in its descriptions of both physical and emotional travel.

Already being compared with Bruce Chatwin and Barry Lopez, William Fiennes is a gifted writer with a voice that is thoughtful, wry, and keenly observant. His book thrums with ideas, with stories and anecdotes, with humankind as well as with birds. The joy of being alive, of being on the move, and -- above all -- of returning home are poignantly captured in this intelligent, exuberant book, a debut of great delicacy and distinction.

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Review

Even without the unbridled enthusiasm of such writers as Peter Carey and Marina Warner that emblazon the jacket, a few pages of William Fiennes’ The Snow Geese would instantly alert the reader that this is something very special indeed. A remarkable piece of natural history and a striking book about the very notion of wandering, this is considerably more than travel writing; it is, in fact, a poetic vision that evokes the splendours and terrors of the Canadian Arctic in a fashion that goes beyond mere description. Perfectly judged prose gives a vision of the natural world that transports the reader utterly.

Snow geese spend each summer in the Canadian Arctic on the Tundra. Every autumn they migrate south to Delaware, California and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the spring they wing northwards again. Fascinated by this, William Fiennes made the decision to go with them and write about his travels. But the result turned out to be about so much more than the migration of geese. This synthesis of autobiography and reportage settles into its real subject swiftly: homecoming, and the powerful pull of the concept of home that motivates us all. The author’s daunting physical adventure is also a meditation on the philosophy of natural science and even the act of autobiography. The sheer energy of the book is mesmerising, and however subtle the writing, we read on transfixed--always relating these strange odysseys to our own travels in the world. The Snow Geese may change your very perception of what home means to you. --Barry Forshaw

Review

'With this beautiful, haunting debut Fiennes joins that small, very special band of writer-explorers - Emerson and Thoreau, Annie Dilard and Bruce Chatwin - who give us another pair of eyes: he has renewed the variety and wonder of the world' Marina Warner 'Fiennes is a very fine writer and this book is pure delight' Peter Carey, winner of the Booker Prize 2001

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