Tuesday 20 June 2017

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

I didn't find Chris Packham's memoir of his early life, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, a particularly easy at first, with its constant changes from first to third person and the changes in chronology, but it was an interesting one and explains a lot about his character. He describes his obsession with animals and insects starting from a very young age and his despair at the death of the young kestrel he reared. His relationships with his supportive parents and sister are fairly briefly covered but to contrast these, there are very full details of wildlife and nature descriptions as well as a few obviously very special moments in his early life. I did have a slight problem with some of the discussions between Chris Packham and his therapist (shown in italics) as he seemed to be expressing thoughts of the therapist that didn't seem to be spoken- so were these thoughts really the therapists, or the authors interpretation of non-verbal communication? One the whole it was an interesting read about a local boy made good ( I live in Southampton) and gives us readers an insight into the early life of a successful presenter of nature programmes, e.g. Springwatch and its spin-offs. In the end, I didn't find the back-and forth chronology too distracting, as that is often how memory works anyway.


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