gloriana232's reviews
89 reviews

While I understand that documents and primary accounts can be hit or miss for historical figures, I found this biography rather thin on any direct reflections on Saint-George. A lot of the portion I read was background on other figures in French society - with lots of elaborate French names, including for figures that aren't important in the account at all, and many of which are repeated or shared between figures - and on various organizations and institutions. This kind of landscape setting is important, but in this instance, it felt tedious and more like an overview of upper-class arts culture. I also very much disliked the author's own use of referring to Saint-George as "the mulatto."  It's too bad this is the only biography of Saint-George available from my local library. 

Fiennes offers sound technical and experiential insight, and very good quotations from primary sources. As for his writerly quality, sometimes I found it hard to get a sense of place and of the players within it, and so lost some tension and drama in the action.

I learned from the final chapter that "debunking" in some circles essentially means cancel culture. I found Fiennes' defense of the Empire, the first World War and Churchill a bit defeating but given the source, unsurprising.

I did gobble this up as an adventure yarn, and found the extensive use of first-hand accounts extraordinary and gratifying. Emma De Long's letters between chapters was a beautiful reminder of not only the souls but hearts at stake.

But while Sides writes fairly sympathetically of Indigenous peoples (when they are present), he perpetuates the same Western view of the Arctic and pumps up the mystery and theories, always speaking from that perspective and leaving out the context that "unknown" can mean unknown to a culture or society, not everyone.

Many of the details around Indigenous peoples are also lacking. Sides uses both Eskimo and Inuit and it's not clear why he uses which when. Also, Eskimo is considered a dated term in many communities, and he doesn't give this context. He frequently uses Inuit incorrectly - a single person is an Inuk, two are Inuuk, three or more are Inuit. He does explain what pemmican is, twice, when it's a fairly well known food, especially in cold survival situations. 

I wouldn't really characterize this as necessarily for children just because it's Dahl!