A womderful and uplifting book for the summer
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Wherever you are going for your summer vacation, or even if you are just sitting at home, do read Robyn Scott's delightful book. It has a charm and warmth which combined with the unique philosophy of the big characters within the Scott family will charm you. For those of us who know and love Africa - despite the dark side that we hear reported everyday - this book reminds us of why we can never give up on Southern Africa. At the end of it all I can say is thank you to this remarkable young lady for filling a long flight with such a pleasurable read and ask her when will see her next book?
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Read this!
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Robyn Scott describes the members of her eccentric family so vividly, and with such warmth, that by the end of the book I felt bereft at having to say goodbye to them. Her descriptions of the Botswana landscape and her childhood adventures within it are beautifully drawn and often very funny. A fascinating picture of both modern Botswana and some fearlessly unconventional parenting. Warm-hearted and generous, a breath of fresh air in these timid times.
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A gem
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It is the warmth and humour which, for me, rocketed this book to one of my all-time favourites. Do not be put off by its "memoir" genre. A few pages in, and the reader is immersed in a highly eccentric but admirable family whose members' curiosity of life is matched only by their lust for it. Set these qualities against the compelling backdrop of Botswana, with its gentle ardours and apparent innocence, and the subject matter offers a fertile narrative.
And how it is told! Somehow defying both her youth and lack of professional writing experience, Robyn Scott's writing is exquisite. The phrases she manages to conjure up are in turn beautiful word combinations, pithy phrases that gain such resonance in the family context and, in so many instances of dialogue, wonderful timing - especially the banter among siblings.
How Robyn Scott reaches such literary heights at her first attempt is beyond me. But for anyone looking for am engaging and (rare, this) heartwarming read, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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OUR VOTE FOR BEST NON-FICTION DEBUT OF 2008
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Arundel Books is an Independent Bookstore in Seattle. Our staff believes that this is the BEST Non-Fiction Debut of 2008.
Robyn Scott's Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is an astonishing debut. Set in Botswana, it is her account of growing up with one of the most wonderfully mad families you are likely to meet, whether in real life or between the covers of a book.
She has a remarkable ear for language, and a descriptive prose style that brings the bush country of Botswana, with all its flora, fauna, and people, to magically madcap life. Twenty Chickens for a Saddle brings to mind such authors as James Herriot and Augusten Burroughs.
This is our pick as the best non-fiction debut for 2008. It is insightful, inspiring, and heartwarming. Her parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbors, and the countryside surrounding them, are truly brought to life. Given Miss Scott's parents decidedly non-traditional approach to child rearing, this book will offer sustenance to parents of home schoolers everywhere.
Whether you like to read about travel, foreign cultures and peoples, families, education, natural history, biographies, accounts of coming-of-age, Africa, science, Horatio Algeresque narratives, women's studies, health and medicine, flying... or just like a darned good book, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is for you.
If this truly remarkable book is any indication, Miss Scott has an astonishing career ahead of her, and we are looking forward to her future efforts. Make no mistake, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle stands as an equal with the very best non-fiction published by any author in 2008.
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A Gerald Durrell for the 21st Century.
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I read a review of this in Conde Nast Traveller by Giles Foden describing it as "My Family and Other Animals - in Africa" and, having been a fan of Durrell since I was a teenager, I felt compelled to see if he was right.
So, granted, there's not so much about about animals in a pin-them-to-a-board-and-count-their-abdomens kind of way, but the way Robyn Scott brings to life the wildlife and landscapes of Botswana, where she grew up as a child, is very much in the spirit of Durrell's books. Hers is also an eccentric family - a flying doctor father, a homeschooling mother, an adrenaline-addicted brother and animal-obsessed sister, and, making regular cameo appearances throughout, her four wonderful grandparents, (in particular her grandfather Ivor who, with his crazy schemes, questionable flying skills and longstanding feuds, makes for many laugh-out-loud moments.) In the midst of it all is Robyn, the narrator, an oasis of calm who desperately wants to be a normal child from a normal family.
The book's real triumph is Robyn's ability to show us the warmer, more human side of Africa that we so seldom get the chance to read about. It's a really life-affirming and big-hearted book, like a love-letter to Botswana, it colourful inhabitants and beautiful landscapes.
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