Kira Salak

Why do we, as humans, do hard things? Why do we run one hundred miles in a desert? Why does Kira Salak want to travel the length of the Niger River from Old Segou to Timbuktu? Six hundred miles of enlightenment? Courage? Money? Recognition? Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer from the 1770s is an obvious inspiration for Salak. She draws upon the experiences gleaned from Park's letters about his journey down the Niger River in 1795 Not only does Salak provide readers with a mini biography of the show more man, she also includes a great deal of historical context when thinking about Mungo Park.
What sets The Cruelest Journey apart from other travel memoirs is that Salak lets the reader into her private thoughts and fears in a transparent manner. In addition to worrying about her safety and getting to Timbuktu in one piece, she is equally concerned about her future. Will she get married and settled down? She goes to great lengths to get answers.
I have to admit the buying of the slave girls was an odd twist at the end of the journey. Even though freeing a couple of Mali slave girls was an objective Salak claimed to have had from the very beginning, she did not mention it throughout her journey until the end. Wouldn't this be on her mind as she travels the six hundred miles? It's not like looking out for hippos or dealing with dysentery. Buying people just isn't common practice for a young white girl. show less

Boy howdy, what a solidly bad book. You gotta love a novel in which the author, in the very first sentence, tells you that the main character is a thinly-veiled author insert. It's one step away from actually titling the book The White Mary: My (Often Embarassing) Ego-Driven Melodramatic Fantasies About My Life and Me, Me, Me. And in that regard at least, boy does Salak deliver.

According to the back cover, she is an award-winning journalist. That may very well be. Unfortunately, she would show more have done us all a favor by writing about her real life experiences instead of burying them under this paint-by-numbers relationship forced march. Folks, at best, The White Mary is a 350-page outline of the story Salak has yet to write. It is quite literally scores upon scores of pages of nothing but endless exposition told in lifeless, cliche-ridden prose. The author--I mean, main character is devoid of any personality beyond what the narrative (such as it is) demands that she evince at any given moment in order to drive the "plot", and thus equally devoid of any ability to induce sympathy or indeed, interest in readers. The love interest is the epitome of the spineless, emasculated "celebrate your inner child and deal productively with your issues" new age eunuch...it almost verges on self-parody. (Seriously, when I, who never, ever thought I would ever in my life find myself wishing desperately that a man start evincing more stereotypically masculine traits, end up doing just that, you know it's bad.) His concern for the protagonist is supposed (I guess) to be genuine and touching; rather, it comes off as creepy and desperate.

Now, as I can't actually back any of this up with quotes yet (although I would dearly love to make others share my pain), as I received the book as an ARC, perhaps a summary of a typical scene from the novel will suffice. The main character, who just can't handle the fact that her boyfriend loves her so much, escapes to a party where she gets drunk and goes home with another man who, insulted by her ballsiness, anally rapes her. After which, she gets up--after being sodomized, no lube, no preparation--and takes a walk for a bit.

And this book prides itself on its "gritty realism." Except when said realism would hinder the melodramatics of the daytime soap cliches it loves even more.

This is all such a shame because parts of the book--namely those told from the POV of Tobo, a Papua New Guinean shaman--are solidly decent. It's a shame both Salak and her editors opted for the lazy, trite, and overwrought instead of working on improving the passages where Salak did evince some promise as a writer. show less

Quite the adventure story of a kayaking trip on the Niger River in West Africa. It's hard to appreciate there are so many places with so little, that so much could stay the same as it was in the early 1800's. The writing is vivid, strong on detail & empathy. My favorite part is the description of the various tribal villages where she stops and how these villages change the closer she gets to "civilization". There are several asides that I didn't find quite worked, but overall an enjoyable show more read. As to the people that ask "why do this?", might as well ask why she is a writer. Neither is something I would choose to do, but still a wonderful read. show less

"The White Mary" is the story of Marika, a journalist who travels to Papua New Guinea in search of her childhood hero, Robert Lewis. Lewis was pronounced dead after an apparent suicide, but a missionary claims to have seen him alive in the jungle. Unfortunately for Marika, she takes the wounds and struggles of the past into the jungle with her, and finds her emotional difficulties are just as bad as the practical difficulties of jungle travel.

I was excited to read this novel by Kira Salak show more because I gave serious consideration to becoming a foreign correspondent, but after reading about some of the horrors experienced by Markia and Lewis, I'm glad I didn't. Salak does a good job of making the reader feel some of the horror and revulsion experienced by her characters in war zones without resorting to gross-out tactics. The book also excels in showing the different attitudes and beliefs of the Guinean tribes featured without looking down on them.

My main quibble with this book was the ending so stop reading now if you don't like spoilers. Basically after a lifetime of misery and commitment issues, Marika comes out of the jungle with all of her emotional issues resolved. While I don't have a problem with that resolution, I do wish that her transformation had either not been so complete or not so sudden. It seemed to this reader that her night with Lewis "cured" her, which felt unsatisfying.

Overall, this was a pleasant read. I would recommend it to people with an interest in books set in island cultures and who don't mind a somewhat unlikable protagonist. show less