Rating: 
Summary: Siberian odyssey
Review: Colin Thubron's travel novel "In Siberia" is a great way to escape to a forbidding primitive land, without ever having to go there yourself. This is precisely why I enjoyed reading his book and I think you will also. Mr. Thubron is an exceptional writer and leaves no stone unturned in his quest to discover the mysteries of Siberia. The tale is spun around his encounters with interesting characters hanging on to an imperialist Russia that has long been abandoned, along with commoners that seem to welcome the stranger warmly. He mixes in a bit of cinematic landscape descriptions along with some interesting history lessons. The only problem I had with the book was Mr. Thubron's use of uncommon words that have me baffled to this day. Words such as: glacis, louche, threnody, tarantas, psalteries, chrysalides, coeval, billeted and others left me constantly scrambling for my dictionary, interrupting the flow of the book. Nonetheless, I found the book to be engaging and enjoyable reading while capturing the mystery and otherworldliness of Siberia.
Rating: 
Summary: Depressing..yet fascinating
Review: Colin Thurbron takes us through a journey into a new and old world. The journey through Siberia provides a snapshot into an area of the world that until recently was off limits to westerners. A world steeped in history with the clashes of cultures, the stench of conflict and specter of death. Siberia was the land where people were sent to die - exile, the gulags, religious schisms. A land where the government got what it paid for: free slave labor produced construction, such as railroad lines, that failed to last in the harsh thaw/freeze cycles of the region. In most people's minds it's a land of frozen cold.
In this cold harshness, there is the new harshness of life after the breakup of the Soviet Union. While in the west we have hailed the new freedoms, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of capitalism as a warm new light on Russia, in Siberia this light is in cold eclipse. Collapse means a loss of ideals, poverty, unemployment and inflation. And it is in here that the book becomes a depressing read. Everywhere that Thubron went, eh found decay and disillusionment; a land steeped in history, yet where history had been built and erased as if a chalkboard by the ideologies in power. Stories of inhabitants carry less promise for the future than a resignation to decline and continued muddling through. The landscape runs the gamut from beautiful to bleak, and this is reflected in the people that Thubron writes about. He does a decent job of describing where he is and the histories involved in sites he visits. The book reflects his research, and his knowledge of the subject - how he can bring alive the last days of the Romanovs in the Russian Revolution, and the people who still visit the site of their death where the renewal of freedom does not necessarily mean a renewal of hope for the monarchy. Or the church. Yet the church(s) cling to life even after the long night of communist rule. One of my biggest problems with the book is that as the author moves westward, winter approaches, the landscape bleaker, the areas less populated. And the stories of the people parallel this - becoming bleaker and full of more despair. Settlements being slowly abandoned. Old ways dying. The book falls further into melancholy as it goes along. The redeeming bright spot for it is the author's continual ability to find the average person who, in the midst of poverty and despair, still find the need and ability to help him - to bring him into their lives, to share food and shelter without even knowing who he is. It is reading between the lines of the story that you can see the hope of a people that, hardened by their lives, and their land, still survive.
Rating:
Summary: To Darn Down
Review: Hello,
I thought "In Siberia" was far too much of a downer as an introduction to Siberia, unfortuantely it is one of the only recent books on the area so many people read it. I thought this was due to the authors own biases and perspectives as someone raised in a affluent and less northern culture. Thurburon covers a lot of ground but he doesn't do a good enough job of getting under the skin of the culture and seeing it....and most noticeably...the landscapes beauty. Granted there have been countless atrocities in Siberia and it is a difficult place to get one's hands around, as Thurburon admits. But as someone from the North and someone who lived in Siberia for three months I saw much more beauty and am more optomistic about life in one of the worlds most wild and ecologically undisturbed places. On the other hand it is worth reading if you have an interest in Siberia because he travels to so many places and can give the reader at least an outline of what those places are like before travelling there themselves. Because of that, and the general darth of books describing post-soviet Siberia I give this book a 3 (it would have been a "2" for "bad attitude" otherwise)
Peace
Brett
Rating:
Summary: To Darn Down
Review: Hello,
I thought "In Siberia" was far too much of a downer as an introduction to Siberia, unfortuantely it is one of the only recent books on the area so many people read it. I thought this was due to the authors own biases and perspectives as someone raised in a affluent and less northern culture. Thurburon covers a lot of ground but he doesn't do a good enough job of getting under the skin of the culture and seeing it....and most noticeably...the landscapes beauty. Granted there have been countless atrocities in Siberia and it is a difficult place to get one's hands around, as Thurburon admits. But as someone from the North and someone who lived in Siberia for three months I saw much more beauty and am more optomistic about life in one of the worlds most wild and ecologically undisturbed places. On the other hand it is worth reading if you have an interest in Siberia because he travels to so many places and can give the reader at least an outline of what those places are like before travelling there themselves. Because of that, and the general darth of books describing post-soviet Siberia I give this book a 3 (it would have been a "2" for "bad attitude" otherwise)
Peace
Brett
Rating: 
Summary: The Prose is Magical
Review: Here are the opening lines of the first chapter of the book, entitled 'Hauntings': "The ice-fields are crossed forever by a man in chains. In the farther distance, perhaps, a herd of reindeer drifts, or a hunter makes a shadow on the snow."
Thuberon's prose is transclucent and superior to that of any travel writer I've ever read: it is a workshop in effective and evocative description. The book does become repetitive, but if you feel yourself getting bogged down, be certain to read the final chapter, 'Planet' about the political prisoner camps near Magadan. It will shake your soul. Contemporary culture is perhaps over-rife with movies and documentaries about the Holocaust, and yet more people died in this place, described by Thuberon as "a continent of death camps."
Thuberon is at the peak of his powers as a writer. He observes, renders with sublime effect, but does not judge (except when it comes to Stalin and the purges). He creates a space for the reader -- to step into and form his own opinions.
It is a mystery to me why Thuberon is not more widely acclaimed in the United States. He makes Paul Theroux read like a sickly child, or the bitter and malcontent axe-grinder that he is. Theroux is the real thing. He is senstitive, strong, artistic, whole. He is a man trying to make sense of a country encompassing one-fifth of the land mass of the world, where the temperature can drop to -97.8 degrees farenheit and your breath freezes into crystals when you speak. Read it,you'll love it.
Rating:
Summary: The Prose is Magical
Review: Here are the opening lines of the first chapter of the book, entitled 'Hauntings': "The ice-fields are crossed forever by a man in chains. In the farther distance, perhaps, a herd of reindeer drifts, or a hunter makes a shadow on the snow."
Thuberon's prose is transclucent and superior to that of any travel writer I've ever read: it is a workshop in effective and evocative description. The book does become repetitive, but if you feel yourself getting bogged down, be certain to read the final chapter, 'Planet' about the political prisoner camps near Magadan. It will shake your soul. Contemporary culture is perhaps over-rife with movies and documentaries about the Holocaust, and yet more people died in this place, described by Thuberon as "a continent of death camps."
Thuberon is at the peak of his powers as a writer. He observes, renders with sublime effect, but does not judge (except when it comes to Stalin and the purges). He creates a space for the reader -- to step into and form his own opinions.
It is a mystery to me why Thuberon is not more widely acclaimed in the United States. He makes Paul Theroux read like a sickly child, or the bitter and malcontent axe-grinder that he is. Theroux is the real thing. He is senstitive, strong, artistic, whole. He is a man trying to make sense of a country encompassing one-fifth of the land mass of the world, where the temperature can drop to -97.8 degrees farenheit and your breath freezes into crystals when you speak. Read it,you'll love it.
Rating:
Summary: Where No Westerner Has Gone Before
Review: Here we find the intrepid traveler Colin Thubron trekking through vast and remote Siberia, apparently because he was just curious about the empty spaces on his map. Thubron is quite an interesting character himself, as this curiosity compels him to all sorts of hardship and travail as he chooses to travel through areas that are hostile and extremely difficult on a shoestring budget. He has little trouble braving temperatures that are way below zero or climbing up cliffs and mountains. He arrives in nondescript small towns at dusk, not knowing where he will stay or how he will find transportation to the next remote locale. Thubron relies on his charm and wit (such as it is) to find food, lodging and transport at the last minute. This is usually done by befriending local residents, and in one case a group of mafia goons, who are desperate for the company or fascinated by his outsider status. Thubron's descriptions of these people and their lives reveal his tendency toward the depressing, which is the main feature of his writing style. His morose ways are also evident in his descriptions of Siberia's vast natural beauty. Thubron describes this bounty not as a visually impressed lover of nature, but with a strange anti-claustrophobia. He contemplates the thousands of miles of taiga and hundreds of miles of tundra with a vague sense of creeping dread, as if he were an insignificant speck being crushed from all directions by a fathomless void. But don't assume that's so strange, because that feeling is apparently how the Siberians themselves see things. Another curse on the minds of Siberians is the vast network of death camps operated there during the Stalin years, where many millions of innocent people were worked to death simply because they got on the regime's bad side. Thubron also proves that Siberia is afflicted with the sense of aimlessness that is also a problem almost everywhere else in the former USSR. The people are now adrift with "independence" but they have nothing to fall back on in the post-Soviet political void, as the Communists erased their ancient cultures and traditions. Thubron's journey ends abruptly at the toxic site of a former death camp/uranium mine. In fact, he writes the book without describing how he got to Siberia or how he got back, as if the journey had no real beginning or end - kind of like Siberia itself.
Rating:
Summary: A nice read
Review: I liked Thubron's book but felt he did not get close enough to the people. After three weeks in a small town (65,000 pop'n) west of Novosibirsk I've become very Russophilic. I recommend Tayler's Siberian Dawn and Taplin's Open Lands for a somewhat more personal view.
Rating:
Summary: One who feels the soul of the lands he travels by
Review: I love travel books.Rarely I found a book so filled whit real understanding of the soul of a people.In this book you get to know what communism was(worse that you'd imagine),what perestrojka was,and a land of beautiful mystery,one of the really unbeknownst countries of our crowded planet.A land of horrors and of frigid beauties.And Thubron's superb style conveys mesmeringly its intriguing nature
Rating:
Summary: Into a very dark void
Review: I'm not a great fan of Colin Thobrun. His style is dark and often involves too much conversation with people he meets along the way. But this time, though, CT is in a part of the world that is almost lost in time - a place that's perfect for his dark moody style. Some pictures would have made it really memorable. But that's just a minor quibble. This is travel writing from the centre of the wilderness. CT will conjure images that you'll find hard to forget. The trip begins on a shuddering train journey east to Ekaterinburg, the scene of the Romanov massacre in 1917. After a brief stop, and some musings on their fate, Thubron sets off east on a tour of Siberia and the lands taken over during the great push eastwards and Stalin's purges. Off we go, up and down the great raging rivers, to once-important communities long forgotten by Moscow. How desperate are the lives of people who once took everything for granted and who now have next to nothing. Thubron's dark style is perfect for the characters and mind-sets of post-Soviet Siberia. We visit Lake Baikal - the world's deepest lake - and Irkutsk, the scene of Russia's gold rush in the 19th century. What a mad place that must have been. There were dancing troupes from around the world, carpet baggers and all manner of adventurers. I bet few, if any readers, know anything about this place and its highly colourful past. We meet mad scientists, mystics and religious nutters (often the same people) and hear the tales of Russian insensitivity towards local ethnic groups. Half the place seems close to destitution. The fate of missionaries who spent twenty years in the wild and frozen east without a single conversion left me morbid, but absolutely riveted. Finally, Thubron takes us over the edge into a very dark place. The death camps of Northeast Siberia. CT doesn't hold back. Through local guides and interpreters he describes the absolutely awful, tragic death camp butchery at Magadan and Kolyma where temperatures regularly reach 50 below and prisoners often had little more than a hole in the ground for shelter. I'm sure he'll never forget what he saw and was told as he walked around ghost-ridden huts that once housed screams and tortured innocents. I'll never forget In Siberia. Brilliant.
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