Review by New York Times Review
Our best bet for slowing down the planetary extinction we have set in motion is to focus on the collective. When we finally realize that we are in this together, that is when we will move away from our insatiable appetite for more. But we have precious few models that illustrate just what it means to know and act together, as a larger unit. Clark - in his vital, immersive and elegant debut - presents us with one such example: the Lamalerans, an ancient tribal society that has survived and thrived by working together to hunt the massive sperm whales that migrate through Indonesia's Savu Sea every summer. And yet, like so much else at this moment, Lamaleran society is being threatened from all sides - by the rise of commercial fishing operations, the decline of the very animals they depend upon, politicians who value economic growth above all else and the desire of tribal youth (in particular the girls) for a life with fewer restrictions. With glittering prose and a novelist's knack for storytelling, Clark carries readers to the heart of this community as they try to manage and adapt to the tidal wave of change that has recently arrived on their shore, asking: Who do we want to become, and what can we do to arrive intact at that precarious future? Reminiscent of Anne Fadiman's "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," Clark's book intimately details, with empathy and grace, the tribe's value system and the physical world on which they depend. Here hunters' shadows dull "the sunlight glittering on the whale's sea-glossed back" as the animal prepares to surrender and make of itself a "Gift of the Ancestors." We often think of indigenous groups as living in remote locations, on the edges of the modern world, but Clark reverses this proposition, using the stories of these whalers to help us understand just what it looks like when the earth reaches carrying capacity and how humans might in turn respond. Elizabeth rush is the author of "Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 21, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
The subtitle sums it up nicely. Clark, a freelance journalist, spent three years living among the Lamalerans, a small Indonesian community that depends on ancient methods of whaling for its survival. It's a community being threatened from within (younger Lamalerans seek a more modern way of life, leaving the ancient ways behind) and from without (whaling is widely condemned in the modern world), but this is no dry sociological/environmental treatise. Instead, it's a gripping story of a community struggling for its very survival, and of the clash between ancient and modern worlds. Clark has a graceful, almost poetic writing style, and his vivid portrait of the Lamalerans and their way of life evokes in the reader a stirring image of a lost world, an ancient society that has somehow stayed virtually untouched by the march of time . . . until now.--David Pitt Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this fascinating debut, journalist Clark offers an account of a small hunter-gatherer society, the Lamalerans, devoted to whaling on the remote Indonesian island of Lembata. On his first visit to the Lamalerans' village in 2011, Clark realized the Ways of the Ancestors-"a set of whaling and religious practices handed down through the generations"-still defined indigenous life there. Wondering how much longer these ancient traditions could last, Clark returned to Lembata several times in subsequent years, aiming to "immerse myself as deeply as possible in the tribe." To that end, he hunted, wove ropes, spearfished, attended ceremonies, and bartered at the village market alongside the Lamalerans. With accessible and empathetic prose, Clark profiles the people he met there, such as Yonanes "Jon" Demon Hariona, a young man who aspires to become a "lamafa," or harpooner, his society's highest honor, yet also toys with the idea of seeking "a richer and easier life elsewhere," away from his community. By exploring personal conflicts like Jon's, Clark creates a thoughtful look at the precariousness of cultural values and the lure of modernization in the developing world. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Journalist Clark's carefully researched and often dramatic first book follows the residents of a small village on a remote Indonesian island as they engage in the tradition of hunting whales and adjust to the incursions of the outside world.Over the course of three years, the author, a two-time Fulbright recipient, spent months at a time on the island of Lembata with the Lamalerans, a group of hunter-gatherers. Of the 1,500 members of the tribe, 300 are dedicated to hunting sperm whales as well as other marine mammals and fish. Scrupulously leaving himself out of the narrative, Clark focuses on a few individuals to tell the story of the group. Chief among them are two young men who aspire to become harpoonists, the most prestigiousand dangerousposition on the whaling boat. Jon, raised by his grandparents after his parents abandoned him, struggles to find a place in a society that scorns him. Ben, an expert harpooner and boatmaker, finds himself drawn by the attractions of life outside the island. The author also closely follows Ben's father, Ignatius, and other older builders and masters of the long rowboats whose construction, unchanged for generations, is guided by the "Ways of the Ancestors." Clark pays less attention to the women of the group, many of whom are sent away to be educated and work elsewhere in Indonesia, sometimes returning to care for elderly family members, though he does devote space to the daily life of Jon's sister Ika, who wants to marry a young man from another tribe. In between the stories of the individuals, the author chronicles the history of the group and the ceremonies he attended in a society that meshes Catholic faith and animistic religion. Perhaps surprisingly, among the chief villains of the narrative are the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy, which promote whale-watching rather than whale-killing. The author argues that sperm whales are less endangered than the Lamaleran society.An insightful examination of a little-known culture. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
