Customer Reviews

Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman: Travels with Sled Dogs in Canada's Frozen North

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Polly Evans ventured to Canada, and some parts of Alaska, prepared to learn about dog sledding. Not only does she learn about dog sledding, but she even helps in the legendary Yukon Quest. The cold, the dogs, the snow, all things she had to learn to deal with, one day at a time.
Not really very interesting. She seems as helpless as ever, which is kind of sad. For example, in Fairbanks she can't even find a piece of fruit and a bag of tea. Yet she was at the Westmark Hotel in Fairbanks. The Westmark Hotel has one of those tourist shops. They have bananas! And I am sure they have a pile of tea of all kinds. I know, I was there in MAY! Saying Fairbanks did not have a grocery store is like saying that the ocean does not have sharks because none of them attacked you the last time you took a dip.
But besides insulting the State of Alaska, and talking a lot about dog poop and complaining about how cold she was, the book is a tad boring. True, she does add a lot of the history but that could have been found in any history books of the cold, icy north. In the end, it feels like she was tired and didn't really wish to write this book. Just not as interesting as her book on China. Maybe being a useless tourist is only funny the first time? I hope her book on Spain is better.
Oh, and I have no problem with her getting mad at the people who run the borders - I have problems with them too.

Prior to this book, I read several of Polly Evans' other books, and they were quite entertaining. I just didn't get the same feeling from this one. It seemed like most of the book was about mundane things repeated over and over. "I scooped dog poop." "I fell off my sled for the 10th time." "It was REALLY cold." And the part of the book where she actually follows the Yukon Quest was definitely a let-down. I'm sure Alaska and the Yukon are very beautiful and interesting places, but I just didn't get the attraction of the area from what Polly has written.

The title of Polly Evans's book is, of course, a twist on the Noel Coward song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (they "go out in the midday sun"). In Polly's memoire, mad dogs and an English WOMAN go out in the midNIGHT sun.

And the Northern Lights, and endless snowfields and forests, and iced roads and thawing rivers, and weird and wonderful people and DOGS, all of which she describes with grace and generosity and, occasionally, outright eloquence, in just those spots where it's called for.

Generally, when I review a non-fiction book, I address things like bibliographies, indices, and charts. This personal memoire doesn't call for them, but it does need a better map of the area. The tracing of the Quest dogsled race route gives no idea how the author got from point to point on it by road: we need roads to follow the routes vehicles took and trailmaps to follow the snowmobiles, and there are many features she cites that are not located.

But her story is terribly trenchant. I was born in England and raised in Montreal, and experienced the kind of culture (or climate) shock Canada presents to the unititiated; in Evans's book, you can experience it too.