It is difficult to pretend that Gilbert White’s tortoise Timothy had the same literary skills as his ‘owner’. However, picking up a copy of Timothy’s book: notes of an English country tortoise by Verlyn Klinkenborg whom I took first to be a publisher rather than the author, I was spurred on to things that I thought might be great. It was the handwritten inscription that provided the spur. ‘For Kurt on his 19th birthday. You’ll learn a lot from this book. Love Rachelle and Anastasia’. Gilbert’s observations are seen through Timothy’s eyes. I soon came across a corner of a page turned over, a despicable habit. This was on pages 3 and 4 out of a total of 181 pages. I realised too that it was the only such instance of a turned over corner. That is as far as I got myself. The device of an observant Timothy is clever but just did not work for me. ( )

Very good, rather sad. I take care of an iguana. I like the non-mammalian viewpoint. ( )

Reading this small pastoral book was something like sitting on a covered porch on a hot summer day, with lemonade. In a rocking chair. Nothing much happens. You're so happy anyway. ( )

i like the idea of this book, and klinkenborg is obviously a good writer (just mostly not my style), but i couldn't get into this at all, or be made to care about any of it.

still, i liked this:

"He picks me up one day in Ringer. Idle question on his face. Feels my tail and feet and as much of my neck as I allow. Concludes that I have no perceptible pulse. As if I would keep my pulse where a human could touch it. What would be the point of all this armor then?" ( )

This is an American, current companion volume to Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne, narrated by Pastor White's own tortoise Timothy. Many times Timothy cites what Mr White said as there is such "a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived...that one cannot safely relate any thing from common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion" (85). Timothy soon adds, " Mr White's true music is the repeated, unresolved music of birdsong. Melody that never finds the tonic again"(90).
Klinkenborg is a deft and skilled writer, a journalist of course, though not in this book. Associative, fragmentary disjunctive and surprising writing. ( )