Skin Taker by Michelle Paver

 Book Review

I never rush these books. 

Since picking up the Wolf Brother in the year it was first published, describing it as “haunting me” because everywhere I went, this cover of burnt brown-orange with the figures of the youth and a wolf seemed to lurk, I have been a devotee of this world. I have always been willing to read each book slowly. Only the great writers make you want to linger on every word, every image, every chapter. 

Skin Taker arrived on the day of publication and since then I have fallen to my same pattern – first third of the book done in an evening or two. Then I begin to slow down, taking each scene, each convoluted plot twist with a lingering pleasure; also, a feeling of dread seeps in as the pages turn that you are nearing the end. The final third of each of the books I limit to a chapter or two on a Sunday morning.

In Skin Taker, Torak and Renn’s world is devastated by a disaster which strikes the Forest. It throws all the clans into turmoil, doubt and conflict. This is the Stone Age viewed through magic, spirits, ritual and nature. If you haven’t given this series to the young adult in your Family or just settled down and allowed yourself to be taken through this collection you have missed out. Michelle Paver has created a world which is coherent and, within the context of the environment, brutal, honest and realistic. The relationships are the things that shine through. She weaves loss, friendship, suspicion, emotion and acceptance which resonates honestly. The characters are believable and driven by their experiences, their environment and their prejudices.

Wolf and Torak’s friendship is the central character of the book in a beautifully woven binary dance of drives and motives. They are not perfect. They make mistakes, atone and apologise, always communicating through their bond of experience.

The other characters, Dark, Renn’s half-brother, Fin-Kedinn, leader and adopted Father figure to Torak are wonderfully three dimensional; so much so that they join the main characters in the front of your mind while reading through every adventure and quest.

The storytelling is vivid, immersive and gripping. You can smell the pine trees in the ice-covered Forest, feel the change of equilibrium in the world devastated by sudden change and yearn for the struggle to recover, and understand the need for Clan animals and ritual.

I am not an expert but this book could be the best-timed young adult book in one hundred years coming as it does when the world is struggling through its own devastation, comprehension, acceptance and recovery.

I am not a parent but I am an Uncle/Great Uncle and this series, and especially this book, is a lesson-narrative.

It also has an environmental message – one of taking what you need, respect and balance – this is strung through the entire series and becomes such a natural part of the narrative that it's second nature not only with the characters depiction of day to day existence but in the reader. That could be the great triumph of these YA books.

As with all Michelle Paver’s books, I came to the end to read that the ninth book in the series would be out 2022 and then my heart sank a little that it’s the last of the series. I cannot wait for Wolfbane, will be sad to come to end of Torak and Wolf’s adventures, but accept that with all great stories there has to be an ending.

 

 The little pipe bowl, without stem, I think is the oldest my Dad owned. On the metal cuff it says K&P Petersons with a hallmark which suggests silver but is in fact nickel - with  three nickel-mount markings of Shamrock, Wolf Hound and Round Tower.

It has a burnt smell, not of tobacco but of scorched old wood. It is burred and surprisingly unmarked. This must be one of my Dad's early pipes. He gave up smoking pipe tobacco around the late nineties when even pipe smokers couldn't argue that it's effects were conjecture. It was also because of his grandchildren being born and the second hand smoke evidence.

The laying pipe has the single word "Plumb" on the plastic stem. The stem is still turned to the side showing the position it was left in by him and betraying how he would smoke it at the side of his mouth; so he could speak and continue to puff. This has a wider bowl. I remember this being a quick hit pipe. A little moment pipe - when you need a smoke, but have other things looming. I presume the wider bowl means that the nicotine comes more quickly rather than a long, slow draw. the wood is dull, unpolished by palm.

The pipe on the left is another Petersons with the additional word Kinsale. There is no silver or nickel. The bowl is shiny, but that is the finish and not because of my Dad's large hairy hands. There are dinks, and dents but these are small and only seen when you hold it up to the light. Within the bowl, at the very depths, there are tobacco strands; I tap lightly and a few fall out. My Dad smoked these - the loss is suddenly raw and present. A memory of him with his pocket knife probing and scraping the remnants of a good smoke out before repacking and re-layering then embarking on another, what seemed to my young mind, an almost endless, languid pleasure. The stem is pale and grimy - the tip knarled a little by my Dads false teeth. This click and clamp comes back to me over the sound of my radio five years after he has passed.

The right one has no markings. This has the dullness of greasy hands, dust and time. It too has a bowl of burnt, fossilized tobacco. The stem is faded. This one is the mid-term one, the one most used, the long smoke, one with a deep bowl where great care would be taken. Dads thick fingers would push down the leaves, sometimes while they were alight to really pack them down. I can see  him, his eyes on the television, a cup of steaming tea on the coffee table, sitting on the settee watching a movie or sporting event; something he could lose himself in.

When he gave up pipe tobacco, he treated himself to an "occasional cigar" but this was rare. The smell of pipe tobacco or a good quality cigar caught on a street corner or near a pub brings those memories back to me.  He would stride across the fields like an organic steam engine, puffing slowly. The pipe would hang at the side of his mouth, gripped by jaw muscles, holding my mothers hand, the dogs loping out into the meadow and returning to check on them while we trailed behind.

How close are those shadows and memories that they can be retrieved with stale tobacco and old pipes.

4 July 2019 Diary Entry

Peter Wilfred Vallance, my Uncle and second Dad, passed away peacefully in his sleep at 3.30am in room 37, third floor of Queen Charlotte Nursing Home with Barbara and Alison with him.

At 5am Barbara and Alison woke Craig and I to give us the news.

We have all felt an overwhelming sense of relief that this gentleman and gentle man, passed peacefully, without pain and with his two champions with him.

The previous night of the 3^rd I spent five hours or so with him. It was clear that nothing would rouse him and his pain was completely under control. Despite this, I spent most of the time watching him breathe; but only once did he take a deep breath and that was as he heard Barbara’s voice. He then settled back into a slow, deep, rhythm.

After getting home, I said to Craig that I hoped he went when the girls were there because they had been with him, defending and caring for him all the way from the first to the last. I could not imagine how my Sister and Sister in Law would feel if they were not there to comfort him in his last moments before the infinite.

The sense of relief is replaced very quickly with guilt and then grief. But no matter how much this pains the living, the fact that he passed without distress and with loved ones around him says it all and will always be our comfort.

In the last year, our lives changed radically. From his first illness, diagnosis and then the Home, we have learned more about his illnesses, the care system and the inevitability of life and death than we ever wanted to. I have always said we were “managing a slow-motion car-crash” and that is what we have done; supporting the two drivers, Barbara and Alison with as much energy and love and patience as we could.

I will miss my Uncle Peter. I will not miss the last year of his life or the distress his dementia and cancer burdened him with and which we tried to shoulder as a Family. It has taught me how strong we are as a Family, how compassionate, how bloody minded and how tolerant and forgiving we are. We have used muscles we never knew we had at our command. Those strengths were given to us by the very Family around us during our whole lives.

An old article written for a Bass fishing magazine -

It's curious when I come across something I have written more than a year ago, I rarely remember the contents. There is a vague retelling in my head and some of the imagery remains, ghost-like and fleeting, but the detail is gone.

At first it worried me and now it comforts me. Suffering from insomnia, I find that writing in my journal or putting down some ideas, gives me peace and allows me to sleep if not well then at least better than I would have had I not sat down at my desk. It's an unburdening, a release.

Some years ago, a conversation with a work colleague and friend led to him saying "you should write an article". We had spoken about my recollections of fishing with my Grandfather (Grandad) and the difference between now and then.

Today, while idly going through some old writings on my computer I found the article and it was like reading something written by someone else. It's over five years old, but the warmth about my Grandad threads through and the simple toiling that he filled his retirement with, all focused on his family, bring him back to me.

Just for him, a simple man, with simple pleasures, content with his lot and always amusingly gruff, warm, a teacher, a gardener and a fisherman, here it is (slightly amended and updated for blog purposes):

"Things Change ….

“Things change” is a common statement and cliché and we’ve all heard it and accept it. But a recent conversation with a Bass fishing friend can make you realise how much has changed. The comparison between now and the late seventies when I was fishing with my Grandfather are eye-opening.

            Since my Grandfather’s death in the early eighties I have not been fishing or even been in a boat. As a young teenager it had a profound effect on me and it was twenty years before I stood on the beach to the bay where he moored his fishing boat. I lost the heart to fish but not the lessons he taught me during our spring and summer fishing trips together. He was a simple man, quiet and unassuming, knowledgeable about his vegetable garden and the prawn, crab, net and Bass fishing which were highlights in his life. He passed on his knowledge by showing you how and then getting you to work out why you did it this way or that. Not so much “show and tell” as “show and think”. 

A typical days fishing started at four am. We would walk the two miles to the coast, carrying our gear and talking quietly. We would get into his wooden boat named after my Mother, “Pat” and what would follow would be an hour or so of retrieving prawn pots, emptying out the catch into a tin bath. The contents were then sorted. A strong memory is the lecture I would get for missing a female prawn laden with opaque-pink eggs along her abdomen. He would say “that’s next year’s catch there, throw her back!”

            The prawn catch, devoid of fish and small crabs etc. which were thrown back, would be placed in an “Holly” – a wooden box - which was attached to a buoy and kept on the seafloor. Inside was a large bait trap packed with dead crab for the prawns to feed on until we wanted them. They were usually brought home on a Sunday for the family afternoon tea. 

When he saw the conditions were right the old man would keep back a few live prawns - no more than ten – in a small water filled bucket. I would row at a steady pace which would not disturb the fish - progress without haste was what mattered. He would get his rod ready as I rowed close to shore. The sun rising over the breakwater at our backs, we would work to the slap of ropes on the yacht masts and the cry of gulls.  When his rod was ready, he would push the hook through the tail of the live prawn; the bait was left alive, snapping its tail in his open hand and able to swim free on the hook attached to the line with a swivel. The flick of the old man’s wrist to throw the bait over and his placing of the rod in the boat over the stern was always the same. He would then assemble and prepare the my rod – the reel was modern (then) called “Black Prince”– which he hated, preferring to fish with his old centre pin Bakelite reel on his.

            We would row further out, drifting with a gentle, regular scull. What would follow would be a lesson is patience and silence, drifting with the tide and wind. He would watch the lines, telling me to scull a few strokes in this or that direction and then drift. The essence was quietness and the least disturbance when rowing.

            If we were lucky a fish would take the prawn and he would be into the fish, his back to me, reeling in and letting run; directing me away from mooring buoys in case the Bass wrapped the line around a chain to break it and escape – which happened a few times. He would also get me to turn the boat to avoid the fish heading under the boat and run to the bottom – so you had to be alert and follow his instructions. These moments of excitement, were a lesson in his knowledge and experience; sometimes with both of us bringing fish in together.  Any mistake that I made was treated with the comment “Jonah”, but then anyone who fished with him on an unsuccessful trip was called this. Something I only learned years later. 

It was recounting to my friend and that we never took a fish under four pounds (usually the old man could tell the weight before the fish came in the boat – if they were under they went back) that I was treated by a shake of my friends head in wonder. Any fish around four pounds we did not release – they were for eating – and it was not unusual to take two or three, four to five pound Bass at a time. When my friend told me that fishermen these days caught and released, I could hear the old man’s voice querying “why fish then!” But then for him it was not a hobby or sport; he got pleasure out of it but it was more like a post retirement activity that made him feel useful and put food on the table. My friend then told me about the reduced Bass stocks etc. and it was my turn to be shocked. In my naivety I had thought that other Grandfathers, Fathers and sons were fishing as we did.

As we talked my friend told me about lures used for Bass, something I had never heard of and I commented that we used live prawns and only live prawns for Bass; I believe my Grandfather thought it had to be the best of what the sea had to offer or the fish would not bite. Either that or no-one had got him to try a lure.

I can only imagine what the old man would have thought about the photographs in Bass Magazine (copies supplied by my friend) or the collapse of fish stocks. We have no photographs of him and his Bass – it was a different time. We, as a family, comment, thirty years after his death, on the size of Bass for sale in supermarkets. 

Things were different then and the knowledge he gave me about my local shoreline has all but faded. 

I hold onto fond memories linked to our years fishing. In so many ways he was ahead of his time – returning fish he thought too small, never taking more than he needed, making sure next year’s catch of prawns made it back into the water than onto a plate. I learned even as a child that not all fishermen were as forwarding thinking. He thought it was common sense to take what he needed rather than being greedy and keep in mind the next season. He made us think about the consequences, if you take too much, you famine next year. I think, after reading and re-reading the articles about the Bass fishing community and how they have changed from thirty years ago that the old man would have understood and even admired the sport of catch and release. I may be doing him an injustice in that he would have been less taken aback than I was.

I think he would have been practical about it and come to terms with fewer fish on his table. The photographs would have amused him but then I think he would have adapted and become a subscriber of the magazine. 

Maybe he would have had us packing a digital camera along with our other gear."

 https://www.ukbass.com/bass-magazine-141/

New Year

It has been three years plus since I put anything here. With the death of my Dad, the obtaining of my degree - a six year struggle - shortly after left me battered and exhausted. All my good intentions fell away and I was left hollow.

Why re-start now?

Because it's time.

2018 was an appalling year for our family, the events of which will be felt throughout our lives.

February -My Nephew at thirty years of age died. His mother, my Sister, proceeded to use his sudden and tragic death to continue the vendetta against her ex husband even using the inquest into her sons death to take a swipe at him and her middle surviving son.

I did not/could not attend his funeral, having foreseen this occurring two or so years before and stating that I would not go. At the time I believed his father and my sister shared equal responsibility for setting him on a path of alcohol and drugs which led to psychosis and an early death. In truth I blamed my ex-brother in law for distancing the family from us and for causing the breakdown in contact which lasted over seven years and broke the relationship between us and my nephews. My ex- brother in law, it was revealed, was not the monster my sister made him out to be and his actions while his son was alive and after his death proved his character. He has conducted himself as a gentleman and a repentant.

On the day of his funeral, I lit a candle in Wells Cathedral with my partner at my side. I am not a religious person but I am spiritual and for that reason a naked flame lit in a spiritual place felt right.  I said goodby to The Boy, as I always called him. His death, senseless and appalling in circumstance will haunt me for the rest of my life and even now I cannot let my thoughts and feeling touch there for fear of collapse.

May - My Uncle suffers a health problem and is taken to my Mums' house to recover. Subsequently, it comes to light that he is suffering from frontal lobe dementia. The tests show that the destruction of the frontal lobes of the brain have occurred because of alcohol and painkillers.

This as well as his prostate cancer which is now into it's seventh year has resulted in a care home. My sister and her partner have stood with him every step of the way, ensuring that he got the diagnosis he needed and the care he required. We have, because of work, tried to support them as much as we can along the way.

What I found was that I started to keep a log. At first this was to help and assist the medical staff to know the traits and strangeness the family were experiencing with my Uncle and his behaviour. It consisted of the physical book started and kept by my Sister and which she handed over to the doctors so they would have the whole family's view of my Uncles deterioration.

I returned to keeping my journal on the PC writing down my observations and feelings. My Sister kept the physical book at her home. After a visit, I would call and describe what he had said or how he had acted - this would be added to the log so the situation could be tracked. My journal expanded a little and it has allowed me to cope with the inevitable path our family is now on with my Uncle.

This sweet, kindly, gentlemanly man who has always been a huge part of our lives is now suffering bouts of delusion and confusion while at the same time prostate cancer has become bone cancer and, according to his physical symptoms, metastasized in his brain. Every now and then we have flashes of the Uncle we know and love which make up for the difficult times. We are with him as much as we can be; keeping him company sometimes just watching a movie with him and sometimes talking him through a television programme because he cannot keep track anymore.

We await the inevitable but try and keep him calm, positive and happy.

The conclusion I have come to is that there never is the right time to resume writing or restart a project. There is only now, a moment when you make time to put things down and capture ideas and feelings.

2018 has been a hellish year for that set measurement of time. But it is not over and our journey continues. Returning to this blog feels right and as the title suggests this is only my chaotic thought.

Goodbye 2015

This has been a challenging year. I have gained so much after a long struggle and a lot of work. My degree certificate has been safely gathered in.

 I am grateful that I started on this path, fulfilled a dream of working with supportive and encouraging Tutors like those at the Open College of the Arts. It has been fraught, difficult, challenging and wonderful.

It is that time of the year when, with the cold securely locked outside and the fires piled high with fuel you begin to look back; trouble is the path I chose is much longer than just this year. But in that spirit I have been thinking about the degree and those moments when I thought I couldn't do it. The poetry course was the main challenge - I find writing poetry restrictive and terrifying. There were moments (entirely of my own making) that I wanted to walk away and just take the qualification (HE5) that I had achieved at that time. How I got through that I am not quite sure but I remember thinking about advice from my Grandfather who always told me that when facing a hill you put you head down and so long as you take one step in front of another, regardless of pace, you have to get to the top. I think that is what I did - and when I couldn't move forward fast enough I read as much as I could.

Since the end of the final course and confirmation of the degree I have been exhausted, physically and emotionally. I never realized how much the studies had taken over my life until I got home one night and (my partner being on call and therefore not home for the night) I found myself wondering what to do.

The loss of my Dad in March was the emotional side. I feel the cliches of wanting another conversation, another (bear) hug or another bout of laughter with him as heavily as beast of burden. There is his voice in my head and I know how he would have reacted at my getting my degree - punching the air with his big right paw while laying in his sick bed. Then after a hug and a well done etc he would have fixed me with sparkling eyes and asked me "what now?" or "when you going to write a book then?". He always had his eyes on the future especially for his children.

So I am asking myself, as if he was still here, what would be my answer?

I have an outline to a novel for children (and even the idea for the second book) which made the majority of the project course. There's the title of the memoir of my life as a child growing up with an epileptic father, which has been in my head since I was around 15 years old. There is also a promise to be kept and a plethora of ideas, notes, half-ideas and scribbled observations which litter the papers/notebooks and files from each course.

My problem now is knowing where the start, what to start with; essentially putting my foot on the path again and starting in another direction. Now the creative life really begins - I said to my partner that I would like to get paid for a piece of writing in 2016. It was a joke...but then maybe not. Maybe that is my goal - not the payment - but the courage to get on with it and put my voice out there. Another hill, head down, one step, half step...