Tue, Sep 4 2007 - TOC Book Club (View Original Event Details)
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It was a small group of us that met at Bernadette's house to discuss "In Patagonia" by Bruce Chatwin. This is a strange book, a memoir of sorts of Chatwin's. He goes to Patagonia (a region straddling Argentina and Chile in South America) from England to follow up on a fascination he's had since childhood with his grandparent's sloth skin which his grandfather had brought back from Patagonia. The book is full of charismatic and interesting characters who have chosen Patagonia as a new homeland from all over the world. It is interwoven with the region's colourful history and makes reference to everything and everyone from Coleridge to Poe to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to some relocated beavers from the Canadian woods. We all found the book a challenging read. Its stream-of-consciousness is tricky to remain focussed on. It has a tremendous amount of information and it assumes the reader is well read enough to pick up on its references and allusions. We all agreed this book might be better appreciated if one reads it more than once to savour its complexity. Patagonia is certainly much more than just a land of sheep who produce great wool.
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