CC Spin #39: The Ring of Bright Water

 The Ring of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell

When I opened this book and started reading, I was a little taken aback when the introduction to the trilogy edition explained that all three books had been edited down in order to become the trilogy.  I didn't sign up for that!  I wanted the whole thing!  But then it turned out that complete editions of the first book are no longer easy to get; they've long been replaced by this shortened trilogy version.  And so, resigned, I decided to read the first part of the book and then see how it was going before committing to all three books.  And I did really enjoy Ring of Bright Water, but I don't think I'm going to continue. Read on to see why.

Gavin Maxwell, wanderer and general nature guy, had tried running a shark-hunting business on the Scottish island of Soay.  He'd gone back and forth to the Middle East a few times, for what exactly he does not say, but writing seems to come into it, and probably also general British Empire sort of stuff.  He was feeling pretty burnt out when a friend offered him an abandoned house on the very edge of the west coast of Scotland -- not too far from Soay, and an area he knew.  So Gavin and his dog Jonnie would spend several months of the year there, enjoying a lot of solitude, ocean, and rough weather.  For book purposes, he called this spot Camusfearna.  

Eventually Johnnie died and Gavin didn't want another dog; Jonnie was irreplaceable.  But he did want some animal company, and after some thought he decided he wanted an otter.  For some reason this otter needed to come from Iraq, not the local beaches, and so on his next trip to Iraq, he sent out word that he wanted an otter.  The first baby otter was beautiful, affectionate, intelligent, and named Chahala, and she tragically died when fed the meat of a large wild bird -- he later figured out that it was probably mercury poisoning, in an amount survivable to a large animal but deadly to a baby.   This sad event only convinced him that an otter was what he wanted, and soon he procured another, this time a male, Mijbil.

The difficulty of getting an energetic young otter from Iraq to Scotland is something not to be underestimated, and personally I think he shouldn't have tried it.  Otters are curious, destructive, and psychologically complicated; they're just not meant for domestic human life, even on the coast of Scotland.  Once at Camusfearna Mij was very happy, but an Air France flight was a high price to pay for it.  Maxwell's descriptions of Mij are loving and detailed, and often very funny.  And it turned out that he was of a species previously unknown to science, and still living in Iraq today.

The problems of Mij's living when Maxwell was not at Camusfearna were difficult, though, and he tried various solutions.  Retired zookeepers?  Renting a spot at the zoo?  Maybe build a tub in London?  It was better for Mij to stay up in Scotland, with friends, but another tragedy took Mij when a random fellow took it into his head to simply kill an otter he saw, for no particular reason anyone could find out.  Mij was wearing a harness so he was clearly a pet.

After some time, Maxwell decided to try again, and asked a friend to procure an otter from Iraq.  I will spare you this part but he eventually obtained a pet otter from some people who were moving away -- a female named Edal.  He also found a local teen boy to act as a keeper when he had to be away.  Edal's life only takes up the last 30 pages or so and is continued in the later books, along with another otter, Teko.  Edal eventually perished in a fire that destroyed the house at Camusfearna.

So, it's understandable why this book was such a hit.  Otters are fascinating, engaging, and fun!  They're so intelligent and playful, and yeah, they're great to read about.  But I had a really hard time getting past my modern lens.  I can take almost any amount of sexism and treating women like silly dolls in old books, but it's really hard to wrap my brain around why this guy insisted on transporting wild animals from Iraq to function as his pets, when they were so obviously not meant to be pets.  They're just not pets!  They've got their own thing going on, let them do it!

So I'm not planning to finish the trilogy.  But I am glad I read the book and I enjoyed the nature writing; I just had a hard time with Maxwell himself, and his insistence on trying to force wild animals to live with him in his house.  (He also tried a lemur, a bush baby, and a flock of tropical birds, all in London.)

There's my Spin title!  I'm glad I got that one done, and it was nice to have it in my year of reading about UK outdoor life, if that's a category.  I have more I want to read but my energies are not keeping up.