Review by Booklist Review
Foster shared the story behind his Academy Award--winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher, in Underwater Wild (2021). Here he chronicles his lifelong pursuit of the wild, from his unusual childhood on South Africa's Cape of Good Hope to his demanding work as a documentary filmmaker focused on Indigenous cultures and "the connections between humans and nature," a quest he pursued to the point of deep psychic exhaustion. Foster returned to the ocean and the Great African Seaforest, training himself to tolerate the cold, free diving everyday no matter the weather, building up his strength, reveling in the ocean's myriad wildlife, and teaching himself how to practice the ancient earthly art of tracking underwater. As he recounts dramatic and wondrous encounters with cuttlefish, sharks, otters, and other marvelous creatures, he compares the "tame world" most of us dwell in with the wild, explaining, as have the likes of Peter Wohlleben, Jane Goodall, and Sy Montgomery, how enmeshed we are with other species and how we must protect the wild and find ways to appreciate nature in our daily lives. Candid, transporting, and philosophical, Foster pays tribute to his teachers animal and human and discerns lessons within his adventures harrowing and ecstatic. We must be amphibious, he tells us, and learn how to live in harmony and reciprocity with the wild.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Though our souls crave communion with wildness, we are a species that has overwhelmingly embraced tameness and 'comforts' that anesthetize rather than truly nurture," contends filmmaker Foster (Underwater Wild), star of the 2020 documentary My Octopus Teacher, in this pensive if unfocused meditation on humanity's relationship with the natural world. Reflecting on his own efforts to connect with nature, Foster describes diving with great white sharks, filming Nile crocodiles in underwater hideaways, and coming face-to-face with a jaguar. The book falls somewhat awkwardly between a memoir and personal essay collection, meandering through anecdotes organized loosely around such themes as connection, fear, and ancestry. For instance, a chapter on love ambles through accounts of how Foster met his wife at an English film festival, how one of his friends developed a rapport with a black musselcracker fish who would follow him on dives, and how a South African farmer Foster met through his documentary work raised an orphaned springbok antelope. Still, the author's deep reverence for nature buoys the proceedings, and the evocative descriptions of his expeditions will transport readers ("The air is thick with buzzing insects and birdsong, and the great flowing river is a giant silver serpent fringed with vast beds of papyrus reeds," he writes of Botswana's Okavango Delta. This is a potent source of wonder. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The creator of the acclaimed My Octopus Teacher documentary celebrates the merits of getting out into the real world. Foster took up documentary filmmaking when he was assigned to a naval base outside Cape Town, working with the film-and-TV unit there. "The Cape's African penguin colony had recently arrived and was steadily growing, having abandoned their island home in search of a better food source," he writes. He wasn't especially bothered by the arrival in turn of a huge population of great white sharks in the bay where he regularly dove. After military service, he took his camera into the desert, learning how to follow animal tracks under the tutelage of the San people. "The most seemingly insignificant signs on the ground or scratches on the trunks of the trees communicated a wealth of information," he writes. Foster contrasts this Indigenous knowledge with the rest of humankind's largely unnatural lifeways over the previous 95% of its existence, glued to screens and climate-controlled environments and such. Foster counsels that we instead take to the woods or fields and learn some tracking skills of our own, training ourselves how to identify plant and animal species and understand their lifeways in turn. The challenge isn't exceptionally demanding, mostly involving a notebook, good walking shoes, and the investment of time, but the rewards are many. As the author observes, you will accumulate "your own nature dictionary that will ultimately transform your relationship with your environment." There's nothing especially original about Foster's musings on nature and the value of spending time outdoors, but it's a pleasant enough read, and it's good to see the nature writing tradition of Laurens van der Post and contemporaries extended into our time. A lucid invitation to build "spider threads of connection and love" with nature. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
