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Book reviews for "Marshall,_James_Vance" sorted by average review score:

A River Ran Out of Eden
Published in Library Binding by Bt Bound (1999)
Author: James Vance Marshall
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Short and VERY sweet
I can best describe A River Ran Out of Eden as an epic. It's a tale of courage, morals, and combatting inner demons. I would also not hesitate to call it a fable. It clearly shows how a single person can disrupt a perfect little domain. It tells the story of a family that has lived alone on an Aleutian island for years, and are perfect, until a stranger comes to the island. The plot is well-paced, there aren't many characters, but they are very well written. This book also presents the plot from every character's point of view, making it great to read. Each character has distinct problems, and I think their mishaps could easily be applied to everyday life. The symbolism is also applicable, the stranger in the book could easily symbolize modern life, and the family could represent all that is traditional. How these two concepts clash is very real, and makes a wonderful story as well.


White-Out
Published in Hardcover by Soho Press, Inc. (2000)
Author: James Vance Marshall
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Instinct takes play
This story actualy tells the truth about what practicaly any man would do in a certain situation which meant life or death. You would have to forget every humaine thing you've learned to survive. This story proves it.

Wonderful
White-Out is a powerful novel of survival on the most desolate place on earth--Antarctica. Marshall weaves one man's tale of human survival with the majesty of life on the desolate continent. The protagonist, Lockwood, finds himself trying to survive on the most inhospitable place on earth and in the process comes to love the god-forsaken land. Its majestic beauty and rich varied wildlife, unmarred by human-kind becomes the sole confidant in Lockwood's fight for survival. The end finds Lockwood returning the favor in a compelling moral climax.

Rivetting psychological portrait and disaster adventure
British author James Vance Marshall, best known for his novel of the Australian outback, "Walkabout," has written a riveting psychological study of an ordinary man's struggle for survival through an Antarctic winter in 1942.

The novel begins after his rescue, in the office of a military psychologist assigned to treat the uncommunicative Lt. James Lockwood, sole survivor of the Royal Navy's secret mission to the forbidding continent. The doctor, directed to break through Lockwood's suspect amnesia and uncover the results of his top-secret mission, sympathizes with his patient's obvious trauma and recommends he be left alone.

Later, the case haunts him. "I am afraid that if Lockwood keeps his secrets (whatever they are) perpetually bottled up, they will become an incubus, like a dead albatross tied for the rest of his life round his neck."

The novel then drops back to the beginning of the mission, ostensibly a military weather station, but also an urgent, secret hunt to find uranium for Britain's nuclear bomb project. Meanwhile, a German U-boat, forced south by an Allied ship, discovers the station and destroys it, killing everyone but the commander, John Ede, who is badly wounded, and two men out fetching rock samples, Lockwood and Petty-Officer Ramsden.

Returning to the devastation, Lockwood and Ramsden realize their only hope is to reach the Antarctic Peninsula before it's iced in - 200 miles in two or three weeks. Carrying their helpless commander and the uranium rock samples will render their task even more hopeless. But Lockwood cannot abandon Ede and Ede will not abandon the uranium, so the two able-bodied men take turns dragging the heavy sledge.

Weather favors them, giving rise to hope. Each day Ede grows weaker but remains alive. Ramsden, more practical than Lockwood but accustomed to following orders, would abandon Ede to save themselves and their mission but Lockwood will not. Their streak of luck falters, fails, and the continent batters them.

Marshall slowly strips Lockwood of the accoutrements of civilization - bodily comfort, companionship, food, light. Isolated in the frozen dark, on a continent abandoned by all forms of life, Lockwood falls back on the primal instinct to survive. His mind becomes his only solace and his greatest peril.

The vast, majestic, terrifying beauty of Antarctica comes alive in this penetrating and sympathetic portrayal of a man thrown upon his deepest resources. Instinct and spiritual epiphany meet and mesh in a manner impossible in civilized society, a contradiction Lockwood must reconcile upon his return. But can he? And if he could, would anyone understand?

Marshall's plain, simple style, and attention to detail, reflective of Lockwood's mind, makes a perfect foil for the immensity of the landscape and the man's ordeal. Powerful, suspenseful and moving, "White-Out" succeeds on many levels.


Walkabout
Published in Paperback by Sundance Pubns (Mass Market) (1984)
Author: James Vance Marshall
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Walkabout
Walkabout is a dated novel. It contains many inaccurracies of animal and bird habitats. The Animals and birds referred to and written about in the novel could not possibly exist in the area in question. Further, references to appropriate "bush tucker" that the local people would take advantage of is not discussed.
It is extremely racist, the aboriginal protagonist does not get identified either by name or is he given the courtesy of being referred to with capital letters. The author continues to refer to the Aboriginal boy, as "bush boy" until his death. He refers to the Australian Aborigines as being "primitive", but does show how they have successfully lived in a hostile environment for 40,000 years or more. They had a very complex social organisation.
References to Afro Americans as negroes who only undertake menial tasks further highlights the author's insensitivity towards any group that is perceived as different to his ethnocentric nature.
References to the Aboriginal naming of topographical features in the Outback of Australia, further reinforces this point. The Dreamtime legends of the Australian Aborigines support the naming of water holes and mountains or rocky outcrops as being the result of mythical fights, or where the Dreamtime Serpent slept or made his toilet, a far more earthy approach than that proposed by the author, who waxes poetically about "the valley of waters under the earth."
Further diplays of the author's ignorance of the Aboriginal culture is shown with the whole idea of the Aboriginal people's battle with death. What an absurd idea! What culture lives continually in fear of death or dying? The idea of a medicine man pointing the bone has an element of truth, in which the author has taken advantage and used on a young boy. This boy has his life ahead of him and is undertaking his entry toward manhood with his walkabout, why should he even think about dying, what has he done to break a tribal taboo? We are not let into this secret, so we can only assume that the author is using his artistic licence.(Tribe is deemed by some people to be a politically incorrect word)
If this is the only view that some overseas students get of outback Australia and the beautiful Aboriginal people then I would have grave concerns about using this book as a class room text. My students research these details, find all the inaccuracies and come to their own conclusions.

An insightful classic of its own kind.
Walkabout is a story of the unification of two cultures that are 10,000 years apart. Peter and Mary, two American kids from Charleston, South Carolina, end up in the ruthless Australian outback where not one person is found in miles, just true desolation, after their plane crashes on a flight to visit their uncle in civilized Adelaide. However they don't encounter what we call civilized. Almost on the point of dying they find an aborigine who saves them from hunger. The boy teaches them how to survive in his habitat from finding alkaloola (water) to how to kill fish in a fresh water pond. The aborigine performs his tribal dances, taking them hand in hand through the weird and mysterious world of one of the most primitive cultures ever seen on earth. One of the most important customs performed by the aboriginal people is the "walkabout" really the initiation to manhood, just like the bush boy is doing in the story, Mary and Peter however are not on a walkabout to manhood but a walk for survival. The author explains the wonderful surroundings with such detail that you feel you are there living every moment. From Koalas to baby Wombats, reading this book is like diving into an ecological realm. A story of insight and warmth straight from the heart. The book accomplishes what it's set out for to teach us more about the aboriginal people, as each chapter, which might seem long but very informative. If you are being assigned this book get ready to consider it a gift and if you are reading by choice you are guaranteed to consider it a very smart move.

everything you need in a good book......
This book challenged my intellect and it was very informative about the aboriganals that live in the Australian outback. It involved many aspects of life like, Racial issues and survival. It also has a very good moral, "If there's a will there's a way." It is also informative about some of the animals that live in the desert and how they survive. In my perspective it is just a good book and it kept me occupied. You should give this book a try, I think that you wil like it to.


New Windmills: A River Ran Out of Eden (New Windmills)
Published in Hardcover by Heinemann Educational Books - Secondary Division (06 November, 1967)
Author: James Vance Marshall
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New Windmills: Walkabout (New Windmills)
Published in Hardcover by Heinemann Educational Books - Secondary Division (20 June, 1977)
Author: James Vance Marshall
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Still Waters
Published in Hardcover by William Morrow (1982)
Author: James Vance Marshall
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