Tarka the Otter - Henry Williamson

The story of the life of an otter called Tarka. A great story of the English countryside, this is an immersive and at times tragic story about life in the wild.

Written in the late 1920's by Henry Williamson, in the Devonshire countryside, this is a nice little book, that reminded me of times spent in that part of the world. The story is a simple one - it tells the tale of a male otter, from his birth and cub-hood and beyond. There is no twists or clever plot tricks, just an easy linear story of a life in the wilderness. It has major moments though, and certain points of this book are genuinely moving and superbly written. Intended as a children's book, it is too grisly for me to read to my kids - adults will get more out of this. I suppose the obvious book to compare this too is Watership Down, in that it is constantly mistaken for a children's book because it is about cuddly animals.

Life is brutal where Tarka lives. Set in what seems to be a peaceful and beautiful part of the world, around sleepy villages and slow rivers, Tarka lives a life of killing and fighting for survival, of lost lovers and his family pushing him out. Williamson writes masterfully, and is an expert in choosing the right phrase, the right timing to tug at the heart strings and produce some moments that are possibly my favourite things I have read this year, and stayed with me for a while, even making me think about events that have happened in my own life in new light. Maybe that sounds a bit dramatic but points of this book really hit me. I don't want to spoil it and reveal which points, so I'm afraid you'll have to read it and make up your own mind.

So we have some real poignant moments of beauty, but they are almost lost in what felt to me to be a very slow narrative. I found it to be a struggle to push through at times, and although it is only 186 pages long, I started to feel like I would never finish this book, and came close to giving up on it. I'm glad I made it to the end, ultimately it was satisfying and rounded the book off. There were two reasons for this - the constant use of slang and local dialect from the time and place that Williamson lived made it hard going - luckily there is a glossary at the back of the Penguin version, but I still found myself googling the definitions of words almost constantly. The other reason was I felt a lot of things happened in this book which were of no consequence, and one meaningless event after another took it's toll on me. I guess that's the nature of life though - otters don't live seeing events in their lives as meaningful, they are just one day followed by another, come what may.

The other thing worth mentioning is the detail Williamson puts in. Every scene is set, every noise is described, and every animal will be in your imagination. Maybe it's because I've spent time in the Devon countryside, on English rivers and coasts, but I felt like an observer in the flesh while reading this, even if I had to look up the meanings of words, which constantly diverted my attention.

So this book had its moments of brilliance, and was a nice trip through the English countryside, but unfortunately was too dull in places for me to really enjoy it.