By Kristine Rabberman.
Turtle Diary, Russell Hoban, New York Review of Books, 2013
It would be understandable to expect Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary to be a light-hearted romantic comedy, one where two lonely protagonists come together ...
By Kristine Rabberman.
Turtle Diary, Russell Hoban, New York Review of Books, 2013
It would be understandable to expect Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary to be a light-hearted romantic comedy, one where two lonely protagonists come together over a crazy caper, a plan to set free the sea turtles in the London Zoo, fall in love, and live happily ever after. Fortunately, Hoban’s 1975 novel bears little resemblance to this simplistic narrative. Instead, Turtle Diary is a quiet, thoughtful examination of the loneliness of middle age and the quest to break free of it. William G. is divorced, 45, living alone in a small flat. He is estranged from his ex-wife and his two daughters, works in a bookshop and searches for ways to fill his empty hours. Neaera H., a writer and illustrator of children’s books, is single, 43, living a solitary life in which she works late into the night, and goes days without talking to another person. They both seek solace in visits to the London Zoo, where they independently arrive at the same plan: to set free three large sea turtles that are confined in a small area in the zoo’s aquarium. After meeting in William’s bookshop over books about turtles, they eventually share their “turtle thoughts” with each other, and embark on a plan to set the turtles free off the coast of Polperro, Cornwall. Turtle Diary explores both the turtles’ significance as symbols of a different way to live, and William and Neaera’s respective struggles to reshape their lives. This is novel that focuses not so much on William and Neaera’s freeing the turtles, as on their attempts to free themselves.
The novel’s structure provides rich opportunities to get to know both characters’ thoughts and fears, as its chapters are alternating diary entries written by each character. Hoban creates internal monologues that weave together observations of settings, recollections of interactions with others, philosophical musings, passages from novels and poems, memories, and the minutiae of daily tasks. Both William and Neaera are frozen by fear of being hurt. Although they are lonely, they veer from contact with others. And their loneliness bears the weight of time lost with little to show for it. As William notes,
I used to think when I shaved and looked at my face that that bit of time didn’t count, was just the time in between things. Now I think it’s the time that counts most. It’s those times that all the other times are in between. It’s the time when nothing helps and the great heavy boot of the past is planted squarely in your back and showing you forward. Sometimes my mind gives me a flash of road I’ll never see again, sometimes a face that’s gone, gone. Moments like grains of sand but the beach is empty. Millions of moments in forty-five years. Letters in boxes, photos in drawers.
For both William and Neaera, sea turtles represent a different way to live. No regrets, no hesitation, no existential struggles. Throughout their diary entries, William and Neaera marvel at the sea turtles’ uncanny ability to navigate through thousands of miles, swimming through ocean currents to Ascension Island to breed. The turtles live by instincts, and their actions embody what they are. As Neaera notes, “[The turtles] were compacted of finding, finding was embodied in them.” In one passage, William jumps from his speculations about shamans to this reflection about the sea turtles,
Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding? Swimming with Pangaea printed on my brain and bones, the ancient continent that was before the land masses drifted apart. That’s part of it too: there were no seas between, the land was one, there was one thing, unbroken. Now there are thousands of miles of open water and the strong ones, the swimmers, the unlost, are driven to trace the paths between, maintain the ancient connection. I don’t know whether I can keep going. A turtle doesn’t have to decide every morning whether to ke
