Customer Reviews

Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary

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Eccentric Islands is a magic carpet that takes you along on journeys as they are best experienced. Mr. Holm provides enough detail of his physical journey to allow you to travel vicariously. In addition, he invites you on the mental trips that accompany his corporeal travel, down paths of history and philosophy. The narrative is entertaining, and the flights of fancy are just enough for me to recognize myself in his journey without the dreariness of endless self-reflection. I encourage fans of Bill Bryson to pick up this book (though there is far less humor than your typical Bryson book). I read it on an airplane, wishing I was headed on an adventure rather than a business flight from Minneapolis to Boston.

Author Bill Holm has produced in this work a wonderful, eclectic, almost at times rambling (but wonderfully so) tour of a number of islands. Many are actual islands he writes about, places where one can journey to; Madagascar, Isla Mujeres or the Island of Women near Cancun off the Mexican coast, Molokai (part of the Hawaiian Islands, once a leper colony, that chapter fascinating and touching centering as it does on the saintly efforts of Father Damien de Veuster and his care for the unfairly maligned and ill-treated lepers cruelly exiled there), and Mallard Island in Minnesota. Some islands he visits are not actual physical places, a few "states of consciousness" which he writes so "resemble islands that they deserve the geographic name," such as the island of music (Holm, a great lover of pianos, clavichords, and harpsichords, describes how producing music can be an island-like experience in a wonderful, wide-ranging chapter that goes into a great deal of history behind these instruments) and the island of pain (how great physical or emotional pain can isolate oneself from others). Clearly this is a different travel book, one thematically organized rather than simply a description of places, experiences, and detailing the history, politics, cuisine, and culture of the particular places visited by the author.

The largest section of the book - and my favorite part by far - was two rather lengthy chapters describing Holm's experiences in Iceland. A descendent of Icelandic immigrants who grew up in Minnesota, he spent time there in 1979 teaching English and then revisited the island again twenty years later. Clearly loving the place and the people especially, Holm provided for me a wonderful introduction of a place I would now very much like to visit.

We learn that Iceland is a surprisingly small country, an isolated island in the North Atlantic about the size of Ohio (about 40,000 square miles), inhabited by about a quarter million people, most of whom live around the capital and largest city of Reykjavik, and that so sparse has the population of Iceland been through the centuries that only 800,000 Icelanders have ever lived (leading perhaps he says to the sometimes hobby sometimes obsession of many in Iceland with genealogy). A hard island to live on sometimes, first settled in 874 (though a few scattered Irish monks did call the place home before that), the population declined due to the Black Plague in the 14th century, smallpox in the early 18th century, and two large volcanic eruptions in 1783 and 1875, both of which caused massive famine by burying hayfields and killing sheep (it was due to the latter eruption that Holm's great-grandfathers moved to Minnesota). Indeed physically Iceland is a rugged country, subject to volcanic eruptions (the island is still growing, as the volcanic mid-Atlantic ridge bifurcates Iceland) and earthquakes (the author himself experienced a minor one in 1998), ninety percent barren lava and rugged volcanic desert, interspersed with several glaciers, tundra, and boiling fumaroles, occasionally tortured by fierce Arctic gale-force blasts of wind off the polar icecap.

Holm describes a number of the most interesting places in Iceland, such as Pingvellir or the Parliament Plain, an oasis in the southwestern corner of the country where Icelanders first met in 1000 to respond to an ultimatum King Olaf of Norway to become Christian and stop horse eating and infant exposure, this meeting the foundation Icelandic law and the world's first true democracy (differing from the Greek in that in Iceland women could vote too), which with Gullfoss (Golden Falls, one of many magnificent waterfalls in the country), and Geysir (the original geyser, now largely spent and worn out) form the so-called Golden Triangle of tourist attractions in Iceland.

I learned many interesting aspects of Icelandic culture. Icelanders for instance love to dress up to entertain - even in tuxedos and elegant dresses - even in the worst weather. They have a great love of giving flowers for nearly any occasion, even for mere visits over coffee. He was continually touched when even on his return he found that concerns of crime and even the security of their nation's leader were nearly non-existent. Holm sampled a number of Icelandic delicacies, including puffin, svartfugl (guillemot; a sea bird), italskt spaggetti (ground mutton, onion, and ketchup basically), svio (blackened, singed sheep's head), and lots of fish, preferred either boiled or prepared as siginn fiskur (fish hung, dried, and aged outdoors).

Outside the major cities many of those in rural Iceland - generally farmers - he found are often quite isolated; Holm found in 1979 that the national highway that circled the island was often a rough gravel track filled with pot-holes, 16-percent grades down steep mountainsides, and areas where the road was completely washed out even. He found quite a bit of improvement upon his return twenty years later but still many areas were a challenging drive. Indeed he took advantage of this isolation on his first visit there to live for a summer with an Icelandic farming family; Holm wanted to learn to speak Icelandic to a better degree (having great trouble with its "consonantal clots, trilled rs, and long soulful diphthongs"), but found that in the major cities everyone spoke English fluently and generally did not let him "butcher" their language - only in an isolated rural settlement were there people who spoke little or no English. Iceland is a very much a nation of writers and of readers, producing many fine novelists - several of which have been translated into English - as well as the famous Icelandic sagas. The author was touched upon his first trip to find people in restaurants, stores, and in their cars enthralled by a reading of one of the nation's great novels, Halldor Laxness's _Independent People_, glued to the radio as the story of Bjartur of Summerhouses unfolded, a saga centering around an uneducated, gruff sheep farmer whose all-consuming desire to be independent and beholden to no one leads to tragic consequences for him and his family.

A wonderful book.

Although I'm a travel essay collector and snob, never has any author told me a story that made me break down in sobs for four pages (236-240). This is now one of my favorite books. I found it by accident, due to an interest in Madagascar and Iceland, but every island described here will enlighten you.

There are a million average writers out there, knocking out non-fiction books on the most menial of topics, but Bill Holm is that rare author who not only feels his topics thoroughly, he has the prose at hand to describe those feelings. And though his subject matter is far from menial, I would read whatever he cares to write about after reading this book. Bravo!

The best thing that can be about this book is Bill Holm's obvious love of Iceland, its people, its culture and especially its literature. Unfortunately, this love is not extended to his students (who he seems to not miss an opportunity to belittle) or his readers, who it always feels he is talking down to. The structure of the book is also another drawback. Holm interspersed empty headed touristy reminices with authetic insights and experiences, and this only serves to water down the book as a whole.

For instance, Holm spends time comparing Cancun and Isle Mujeres, clearly implying that the latter is more authentic than the former. Having been to both places I can attest that Isla Mujeres is just as much a tourist trap as Cancun--albeit slightly less glitzy. On top of that, Holm quite condescendingly tells the reader to go somewhere else, implying that he is the pioneer, the arbiter of truth and that we, his readers are the ruinous consumer hordes who's presence inevitably serves to wreck the fleeting, blissful Eden experienced by Adventurer Holm. Frankly, I must confess that I find that thesis insulting and pretentious.

Never the less, I was still deeply drawn in by Holm's description of the geography of Iceland, especially as it related to its literature. The few quotes from the Outlaw Sagas and the Eddas that he includes and intelligently interprets caused me to immediately seek these items and want to read more. For doing that, Iceland and the readers owe Holm their thanks.

I could add plenty more criticism of this book but instead I will simply recommend reading the Iceland passages and skipping all else for a satisfying experience. Holm really knows his stuff when it comes to Icelandic literature and you can trust his instincts and appreciate his admiration. If only the entire book had been about Iceland, it would have suceeded at a much higher level.

I dove into this book with an avid interest. The writer takes the reader through his various travels abroad and through his own lifetime. Sounds great. Except just like any travel companion, after some time you've heard all of the stories again and again.

The writer is from Minnesota, he's so proud of this fact he tells us this more than 50 times. He's of Icelandic descent ( also interesting the first time ) he tells us this fact many many times. Repetition turns to redundancy. Then to scorn as the authour begins to diss America. You know the refrain, everything and everyone in the US is shallow and material and all our forefathers knew better and when these immigrants died they took the culture with them. Holm wrestles with his forefathers like you'd wrestle with aging. He takes it to heart. That's fine only it's boring. I wanted to read about adventure and I'm stuck listening to some guy who never made mucho bucks diss everyone who did. Not eccentric or island related at all.

Like other writers and travelers before him, Holm claims to have found the simple spirit of the third world poor happier than anyone else. Only he doesn't stick around to live there. It's easy to make people appear as you want them to, then pass on through. By the end of the book, I was tired of this person. Tired of his inability to tell a story without preaching and show me the way rather than fitting his ethos into an island of any sort.

Some parts of the book are revealing if you have not visited the places. The Icelandic trips he takes are full of flavor for the place. I liked them a lot.

With a good editor to strip this book of its generalizations and redundancy it could be a real gem. I particularly liked the islands of pain and islands of the imagination.

Using the concept of islands as a metaphorical vehicle, Bill Holm speaks to the intellect and to the soul. Bill Holm is amazingly descriptive and beautifully human.

Recounting his visits to real islands we grasp the human (transcending culture) values of neighborhood and community. Islands of the imagination are explored, as places of retreat, creativity, and reflection. In a final powerful closing caveat Holm warns against allowing the imagination to turn inward on itself and to play only with itself. In D.H. Lawrence's "The Man Who Loved Islands" our tragic hero discovers before he dies alone:

"My individualism is really an illusion. I am a part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched."

So praise that which makes us human, make connections, share, let down your guard, free your imagination, get off your island and tour some of the others.

Buy this book and read it.