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The Snow Geese by William Fiennes

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Reviewed by Lynne Hatwell who is Dovegreyreader

Taken seriously ill in his mid-twenties and debilitated from several rounds of major abdominal surgery William Fiennes found himself back in his childhood bedroom at the castle and returned once more to the state of a child dependent upon his parents for care as he recovered.

Coming across an old childhood copy of Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose was the inspiration for a journey to emotional recovery once physically healed. William Fiennes set off on his own odyssey to follow the migration trail of the snow goose from its winter sojourn in the American south to summer breeding grounds on Baffin Island in the far north of Canada.
The plan was to journey with the birds, by Greyhound, by train however, but along the way there were people to meet, strangers who become friends and traveling companions thus providing the perfect medium for memoir writing. Except something else Will mentioned at Dartington was that some books need to be released from genres, to be allowed to stand alone and be what they want to be, this is much more than memoir. He also revealed that this book is often misfiled in bookshops under ‘Pet Care.’
Often effaced from the encounter and certainly offering no opinions or judgments on the people he met, William Fiennes allows us to get to know them as if meeting them ourselves.
At Dartington, someone asked the question,

‘What did you think about the Americans that you met in The Snow Geese?’

and William replied that he felt blessed by the encounters as may anyone who reads this book.
I might not have spotted it but Will did reveal that whilst The Music Room had settled into a quartet, The Snow Geese settled into a gentle and rhythmical octet of storytelling , eight alternating parts, journey – sojourn and finally a homecoming for both the geese as they arrive in Foxe Land and for Will as he contemplates what home means

‘Not all returns are retreats, and if I wanted to go home, it wasn’t a dream of escape, it was because love can’t exist without the pain of separation, and so much of what I loved was there.’

Homesickness designated a name in 1688 and termed nostalgia, now of course meaning something quite different but then recognised as

‘continues sadness, meditation only on the Fatherland, disturbed sleep...decrease of strength, hunger, thirst, senses diminished...palpitations of the heart, frequent sighs, also stupidity of the mind.’

And genuinely believed at that time only to afflict the Swiss and connected to the descent from high alpine meadows to the lowlands. One little person came immediately to mind, though Will doesn’t mention her, but it’s Johanna Spyri’s Heidi of course and how ill she became when sent from her Alpine home to Frankfurt to be a companion to Clara.
The writing is exquisitely beautiful, I took this journey too though was thankful to bypass the actual moment when, sporting a parka that felt like ‘wearing a bungalow’, Will faced up to the inevitable meal that was likely to be served up as he travels with the hunters out to track the plentiful and nicely plump snow geese to their breeding grounds.
This is a book to treasure and read again and again, especially perhaps when the logistics of actually doing a journey defeat you yet perhaps you still have that yearning to travel somewhere, so it was a natural progression for me to access the Inner Child and read and love Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose all over again too.

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Price: £7.99

Product Code: THEK25

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