Turtle Island
A Journey to the World's Most Remote Island
by Sergio Ghione
Overview
From the Publisher
Ascension Island is a wilderness of volcanic rock, land crabs, and stray donkeys in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It erupted into existence about 600 years ago and was discovered by the Portugese in 1501. However, it was only when Napoleon was exiled to nearby St. Helena that the island gained strategic importance and was snatched up by the British. It went on to become a crucial "node" in both world wars and the Cold War. The 1960s saw the building of a NASA base which was crucial to the Apollo missions. The thousand or so people who live on this island now do so because they have been brought here by their work for NASA as fishermen, or simply to service the existence of the colony. Ghione's work was to travel there to study Ascension's most famous inhabitants: the extraordinary sea turtles that arrive each year to lay their eggs. Combining history, science, geography, and journalism, this quirky and charming book is a wonderful tale about a very peculiar place - a tiny piece of Britishness absurdly at odds with the reality of its bleakness and isolation. Ghoine has a sharp eye for the curiosities of island life, such as the single grocery shop that sells Christmas goods year round, the ritual of throwing paint at a particular curbstone, and many more. Come and experience the strange world of Ascension Island first-hand!
My thoughts
This little book was a gem of a find! I had ordered it from BookCloseOuts.com several months ago, and when I finished the Twilight series, I simply grabbed the next book on the top of the stack and this is the one I got. My good fortune!
The book was written by an Italian author and has been translated into English. I found the writing style to be quite amusing. The reviews state that the author has a knack for seeing peculiar and unique things on the island, and I would certainly agree with that. I liked the way the book is broken into sections, so that you can pick it up and read a couple of pages whenever you have a spare moment without needing to devote an hour or two to a whole chapter or segment of chapters. The book is about the study of turtles that migrate to Ascension Island to lay eggs, but the book is about a lot more than that, too. Ascension Island is a peculiar place, known widely to philatelists (see below) apparently (Who knew?!), but completely unknown to most of the rest of us! I'm glad I got the insider's tour of this little island. I probably won't be vacationing there anytime soon (!) but I absolutely loved reading about it!
Favorite Passage
Note: I claim bias to this passage, as it held personal and very humorous meaning to me!
The post office, immediately recognizable thanks to the familiar round red postbox near the entrance, is a place of considerable importance for all philatelists all over the globe. Stamps which are obviously produced in Britain are transported out here, where they are franked for authenticity and are then dispatched around the world for stamp-collectors to savour (as well as to exchange and sell). Inside the small post office, a glass case displays the latest issues. For the Queen?s seventieth birthday there is one showing a now elderly Elizabeth II wearing the inevitable hat and, in the background, the church of St Mary of Georgetown (twenty pence) or the Administrator?s residence (twenty-five pence) or the Exiles? Club (sixty-five pence); then there is one with the local seabirds and flora of Ascension; and another still with a most improbable Santa Claus going round the island celebrating Christmas 1995.
