Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

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From his childhood roaming and searching for nature specimens and animals, his home life, torturous school days, teens and a fast forward to his sessions with a therapist where he discusses his suicide attempts.

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar | BTO - British Trust for Ornithology Fingers in the Sparkle Jar | BTO - British Trust for Ornithology

Who edited this book? Do they speak English and read other books? It's a stupid and facetious question, clearly nobody edited this book, it's a rank and steamy mess of adjectives and adverbs with no substance. Well, that's not true, there's some small substance there in the story of how the author (I think it was the author, I'm not certain) stole a baby kestrel from its nest and took it home to keep. That wasn't really the substance I was looking for though, on the face of it that's pretty horrific and the airy fairy waffle surrounding it doesn't exactly put it in any kind of context to alleviate the sense of a dirty sort of PETA-baiting larceny. Chris brings to life his childhood in the 1970s, from his bedroom bursting with birds' eggs and jam jars, to his feral adventures. But throughout his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn't understand him. If you are expecting a book of rather sweet wildlife tales from your favourite TV personality then this book may not be for you. This is a brave and powerful book.

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds’ eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn’t understand him. I am.’ He replied quietly, ‘I’m the enemy, my enemy. And I’m chasing myself and when I finally catch me I’m going to kill me.’ He spoke as if this scenario was a simple, obvious, everyday matter of fact so she responded in a similar vein, ‘How do you stay ahead?’ The writing is atrocious. There are compound words galore, often made up by the author. That's not always a bad thing, with a deft touch it's something that can add a lot to a book. It's not adding anything here though other than moments of unintentional hilarity. I was reading some of the book out loud so I wasn't the only one suffering, and it took me several minutes to get through the first sentence of one early chapter, because it began with the word "Upfalling" and I couldn't stop laughing.

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir - Softcover - AbeBooks

His love of nature resulted in him going on to study zoology at Southampton University, after which he trained to be a wildlife cameraman – leading to his job on The Really Wild Show, and before taking over the anchor role on Springwatch from Bill Oddie. This illuminating book contains a great deal of insight into Asperger’s syndrome and is definitely worth reading. The author is not only an author, naturalist and nature photographer, but also a television presenter. Narrating his own book was thus a given. He is a talented speaker and nobody but him could possibly have read the lines with such perfection. He is best known for the children's nature series The Real Wild Show ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rea...) of the late 80s and has presented the BBC nature series Springwatch ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springw...) from 2009. I recommend listening to the audiobook rather than reading the paper book. You get an added dimension. You hear through his intonations what the author saw through his eyes and felt in his heart. This is a great book for both children and adults. The descriptions of nature, wildlife and the countryside brims with his passion for his favoured subjects. This was a really relatable read in lots of ways and the writing was very lyrical and poetic and he seems a gifted storyteller.

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The biggest surprise was the honesty with which a champion of nature preservation admits to collecting rare birds eggs, snaring foxes, and taking a young falcon from the nest as a pet. There are also harrowing accounts of the bullying Chris suffered at school - without understanding the reason. At one point he asks his therapist, 'How could anyone be happy as a child?' These italicised passages reveal the troubled, even suicidal legacy of a childhood living with undiagnosed illness. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is a sweet story about a boy's idyllic childhood exploring nature, though. Much of the material is hard hitting and raw. Encounters with nature are often described with brutal honesty and can be graphic and upsetting. In one story, that weaves its way through the book, teenage Chris steals a baby kestrel from its nest, setting off a chain of events that scars him mentally and causes him to contemplate suicide. Lastly in other sections we meet him in his early 40's, apparently having counselling following a suicide bid. These passages are written in italics, not sure why. The flip side of the tortured anguish is Chris's passionate love of wildlife of every kind and, when younger, of dinosaurs about which he knew every fact there was to know. His fascination leads him to eat toad larvae to see if their molecules would sharpen his vision; to cycle off on night wildlife adventures; and become obsessed with otters. His greatest love was his rescued kestrel which was, as Chris writes so beautifully, 'something shiney I had caught with my heart' and which he tended and trained with meticulous care and devotion. It's not even just written in the third person, much of it is from the imagined point of view of the people around the author. Did he have that level of insight into the life of the guy who drives the ice cream van? No, it's a stupid device to make boring non-events into tortuously long passages where nothing happens other than several things are overly described, and then ignored forever.