Customer Reviews

The Snakebite Survivors' Club: Travels among Serpents

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4 star:		(6)
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I had expected to find the recollections of a naturalist; instead I found an engaging tour of one man's attempt to overcome his phobia of snakes. It was not really about his fear, though, rather, it was mankind's fear he was challenging. His attitude to down-home rattlesnake roundups put me off, the least he could have done would have been to criticize their brutality. Otherwise, a fantastic book. P.S. if you are looking for a naturalist book, read Erik Pianki's The Lizard Man Speaks.

Those who either love snakes or are scared to death of them will be enthralled by Jeremy Seal's travels in search of survivors who've been bitten by the world's deadliest snakes. Seal's adventures take him to Africa in search of survivors of the notorious Black Mamba, to India in search of the King Cobra, to Austrailia which has the world's deadliest snake in the Taipan and to Appalachian U.S., where Holiness Church members handle live rattlesnakes as part of their services. The most memorable sequences are the horrifying experience of a preacher's wife whose husband tried to murder her by forcing her to put her hands in a rattlesnake cage and the graphic descriptions of the effects of Taipan poison as recounted by a lucky survivor. The only knock on the book is that Seal chooses to break each segment up into about five parts which are interspersed throughout the book. This makes the stories sometimes hard to follow. Nevertheless, it is compelling reading that might have you checking under your bed before turning out the light at night.

As a snake owner (albeit a non-venomous one) how could I not order this book? When it arrived, I was delighted to find it was beautifully written and taught me about many species of snakes I did not know about, as well as the mind-set of those who seem undaunted by hunting and handling poisonous snakes. I know (from various herpetology society newsletters as well as regular news items) that the lure of breeding and keeping 'hot' snakes (as they are called in the trade) exerts a strong fascination for many. Jeremy Seal captures this psychology very well, as well as the attitude of most of us: we want to look at the deadly creatures, but not too closely.

The book also gives fine background about the natural history of Australia and Africa, introduces a set of human 'characters' that you will never forget, and keeps the reader in suspense about many of the stories by shifting locales, like the old matinee cliff-hangers.

Like another reader, my only suggestion for improvement would be that he would have come out against the rattlesnake roundups, which will soon be making an impact on the population of the rattlesnakes and sending them the way of the passenger pigeon or the dodo. Such elegant and beautiful creatures (who are only trying to eat and survive, after all) deserve better.

Great book, great job, Mr. Seal! Thanks for writing it for snake and non-snake people alike.

I enjoy thoughtful rambles as much as the next person, but Snakebite Survivors has too little burger, and way too much bun. Furthermore, Seal divides each story into four or five sections and then sprinkles them around the book. So to actually follow one of his narratives, the reader must wade through not only his constant musings about his cabbie's driving style, what Australia looks like from the air, and just about everything else --not only that -- but also the bits and pieces of all the other narratives that he mixes in. On the other hand, the basic stories and information are interesting and enjoyable reading. If they weren't so jumbled up and mixed with irrelevancies, I would have really enjoyed the book.

I dreamed about being a herptologist as a boy, and my children's interests in reading about snakes revived my boyhood curiosity. I found this book in the library, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (And personally, I was glad that Mr. Seal was NOT a member of the club....:-)

I appreciated Mr. Seal's openness about his fear of snakes (one that I share). I would recommend this book to anyone interested in snakes.

A few random comments:

1. I was thrown off by a few British-isms scattered throughout the book. (Some sentences didn't make sense to my American ears. I suppose the same charge could be leveled at American authors. Still - I would encourage Mr. Seal to be more cautious about the use of slang in future books.)

2. Mr. Seal (or the editors) broke up the stories - I imagine in a way that was supposed to build tension in the reader. While I appreciate that device in some books (mostly fiction), I found it annoying in this one.

3. I found the sections on the fundamentalist snake holders to be fascinating (that STILL happens in America?!?), but I'd urge the author to be cautious of the conclusions he draws - America is a big country, with many different perspectives.

Not wanting to sound nationalistic. Just a few thoughts I had while I read the book.

Again - overall, I enjoyed it, and look forward to other books by the author. :-)

Much like the author of "Snakebite Survivors' Club," I am both fascinated and repelled by snakes. Seal cleverly combines tall tales with stories of the hard facts of living in parts of the world where venomous vipers are thick on the ground. Seal travels between Australia, America, India and Africa, relating the experiences (quite graphically) of people who have been bitten by everything from rattlesnakes to cobras to the deadly black mamba. Some of these are professional herpetologists, some are religious "snake handlers" (one with murderous intent), some are just unlucky locals. He jumps from one part of the world to another in a cliff hanger fashion, leaving us breathless and off center, much the way one feels when encountering a snake in real life. I love the author's frank admission that he is an admirer of snakes but a major coward when they get up close and personal. A wonderful combination of travel book, natural history, great story-telling and medical manual, "The Snakebite Survivors' Club" has only one major flaw -- the author is not a member of this club, and I kept expecting him to be. But like Seal, I enjoy snakes vicariously. Let Steve Erwin wrestle with pythons and taipans, and I will watch happily with horror and awe. The same pleasant chills are to be found in this fascinating book.

This book could have probably been half as long as it is if he'd stick to snakes and things pertaining to them. There was much "historical" information setting up a chapter that just went on and on for pages with little-if any-mention of snakes. The stories that actually DID involve serpents were usually quite interesting, but the format mentioned in other reviews about each story being broken up and scattered around the book was really annoying. This one took me a longer time to finish than I wanted. I hoped for venomous snakes, but it fell far short of my expectaion. See if a library has it before spending money on it.

The Snakebite Survivors' Club by Jeremy Seal is subtitled "Travels Among Serpents." In fact, this book is about travels among people who get sometimes too close to highly poisonous snakes. The book is a travelogue, and British author Seal traveled to four places where snakes are very venomous in pursuit of people who hunt, handle, and get bitten by snakes: Appalachia in the USA where fundamentalists take literally the Bible passage about having faith to handle venomous snakes and sometimes pay the ultimate price, rural southern India where the cobra is worshiped as a phallus symbol and fertility God, Kenya where the black mamba lives in trees and strikes passing humans on the shoulder, and home of the most dangerous snake of all, the Taipan in Far North Queensland, Australia. The book is well constructed, entertaining, and enlightening. Anyone with an interest in the principle subject matter -- people -- will find this a delightful read.

This is a fascinating read combining a documentary about snakes and a travelogue. Jeremy sets out on an adventure to four countries to learn more about their deadliest snakes: the eastern diamond rattlesnake of America; the taipan of Australia; the black mamba of Africa; and the Indian cobra.

The descriptions of the creatures are entwined in true stories of death and survival. The serious and comical tales from the depths of herpetological literature are entertaining, witty, and wonderfully bizarre. My favourite tale is set in Barbee Lane, Scottsboro, Alabama in 1992 from the court transcript of a murder trial.

Glenn Summerfield, a preacher and herpetologist, attempted to make his wife's death look like suicide when she deliberately placed her hand into the diamond rattlesnake's cage in the farmyard shed. There were seventeen snakes in the shed and it wasn't quite so deliberate: she had a gun pointed at her head. "Too much booze and strychnine, too much suspicion, and too much plain rattlesnake venom in his blood had finally pushed him over the edge" and he wanted revenge for his wife's suspected liaisons with other preachers. Glenn didn't want to live with Darlene any more and he didn't want anyone else to have her. She had to die because he was a preacher and it was a sin to divorce in Alabama. So Darlene, being a dutiful wife, moved her left hand toward the rattlesnake. After doing as her husband demanded, she did not die, and was forced to do it again.

Jeremy Seal makes his travels and stories intriguing as he not only sets the scene for the human characters, but he never neglects to include the spine-tingling descriptions and anecdotes of the main characters: the snakes. He writes as hypnotically as his obsession with the serpents and brings the deadly creatures to the readers' chair with vivid descriptions of their colour, shape, character and intricate movements.

Martina Nicolls, Author of "The Sudan Curse" and "Kashmir on a Knife-Edge"

As someone who loves both snakes and travel writing, I was intrigued by this book's topic. Though the author proclaims himself "phobic" of snakes, his attitude is probably closer to that of most people--a mixture of fear and fascination.

Seal focuses on four snakes: taipan (Australia), cobra (India), black mamba (Africa) and diamondback rattler (United States). In each country, he pursues both the snake itself and the people fascinated by snakes.

This travelogue explores psychological and religious affecting our relationship with snakes, as well as interspersing Bill Bryson-esque encounters with the people in each country (Seal is British, and thus a stranger in each land he visits). The author is amusing as well as informative; when dealing with snakes as venomous as these four, it's hard not to be dramatic. Historical tidbits (such as the Australian immigrant surrounding his home with snake-free Irish sod in hopes of repelling Australia's reptiles) lend a terrific feel to the book.

The primary difficulty I experienced with this book is its format. Each chapter covers one segment of his experience in a different country in a rotating format (oddly, India doesn't appear until we've gone through about three segments in each of the other countries). This occasionally makes it difficult to follow the multiple story threads. Additionally, the saga of the American woman whose husband attempted to murder her with rattlesnakes is excessively long and drawn out.

On the whole, however, this is a great read for anyone who either loves or hates snakes.