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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Down the
Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Travels An
armchair traveler will receive abundant pleasure when reading Rosemary Mahoney’s
book, Down
the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff. The headline for this adventure
wouldn’t make the local newspaper: foreign woman rows a section of the Nile
for a few days. Perhaps as a testament to the fact that good writers can
write decent work about just about anything, Down the
Nile is a well written story of the author’s adventure in trying to do
something she loves in an unfamiliar place. Here’s an excerpt, from
the beginning of the chapter titled, “Luxor,” pp. 180-181: We
set off for Luxor, half an hour's ride, and immediately
it became obvious that something was seriously wrong with the taxi. Every
five minutes or so, the car I
looked out the window. In this middle of nowhere, a group of women draped
from crown to toe in flowing black robes walked barefoot along the edge of
the road, with baskets balanced on their heads. They looked otherworldly,
almost demonic in the blinding light, their shadows slithering across the
desiccated ground. Chickens and children straggled in and out of the open
doors of mud-and-straw houses. Dry irrigation ditches with cracked mud
bottoms sprouted weedy grass. Flat fields of alfalfa rolled endlessly by. A
van overcrowded with turbaned men sped past us at ninety miles per hour,
honking and teetering wildly. Egyptians
drove in a fashion that could only be described as chaotic. They seemed
compelled to position their car in front of the one ahead of them at any
cost. At night they drove with their headlights off until an oncoming car
approached, at which time they helpfully blinded the opposing driver with a
sudden flash of the high beams. And Egyptian highways were minefields of
disaster. There were always skinny figures leaping across them at just the
wrong moment, entire families sitting down to picnics in the middle of them,
cars speeding along them in the wrong direction, men stopping their cars to
pee in the fast lane, sudden pointless barriers stretched across the road, or
wayward oil barrels, or boulders, or a huge herd of hobbled goats. Every ten
miles or so the hideously crushed hull of a truck or car would appear at the
edge of the road, the rusting, twisted remains of past accidents, and yet
these gruesome and shockingly numerous reminders never seemed to chasten
Egyptian drivers. They raced and careered and honked their way along with the
heedless abandon of people who believe either that they are invincible or
that life has no value whatever. The
problem with our taxi gradually grew worse. We were now traveling a mere ten
miles per hour while the car shuddered and pitched and fumed. Smoke billowed
out of the exhaust pipe. The driver seemed to be praying over the steering
wheel. Unlike
the overwrought travel writing that encourages visitors about all that they “must”
do when in such and such a place, Down the
Nile is a relaxing narrative about going somewhere unfamiliar and doing
what you love. Steve
Hopkins, February 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the March 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Down the Nile.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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