QUICKSAND TALES
Keggie Carew (Canongate, £16.99)
By her own admission, Keggie Carew has a talent for getting into toe-curlingly awkward situations. “Something irresistible attracts mishap and misadventure to me,” she says, “or me to it.” Reading the anecdotes of Quicksand Tales, a compendium of her most embarrassing moments, some might suggest that she’d got off lightly, but it’s worth bearing in mind that these are only the ones she can bring herself to own up to. Plus, it’s got a lot to do with the way she tells ‘em.
Carew first appeared on our radar with the 2016 Costa Biography Award-winning Dadland, her memoir of losing her father to dementia. With a background in contemporary art, she’s lived on several continents, which in her case just means a broader canvas for calamity. From being freaked out by a potential murderer at an isolated campsite by Lake Tahoe to having a confusing dinner with the Auckland academic whose brother is a movie star, she has blundered from one sticky situation to another. Sometimes, she was the innocent party, more or less. Sometimes, she was provoked – and who wouldn’t react badly to the ransacking of their most sentimental treasures? And sometimes she doesn’t come out of it smelling of roses at all. There are times when it’s all too easy to take against Keggie, such as when she allows her husband to feed hallucinogenic mushrooms to a highly-strung houseguest, or seems a little too eager to watch corpses burn on the banks of the Ganges.
Luckily, Carew has a knack for spinning an amusing yarn, and this account of her life’s various disasters can be painfully funny, thanks largely to her self-awareness and willingness to show up her own absurdity as much as other people’s. A chapter about her experiences in an overly-strict Tayside hotel comically exposes the pettiness of the proprietors. But the fact that Carew’s long-awaited revenge is equally petty, as she drops more and more clues to its name until one finally throws the book aside to Google it, makes it funnier still.
But there are serious overtones too. When she recounts the misadventures of a four-day camel expedition in Tunisia, and the awkward relationship with the driver they later hire in India, she and her husband do come across as stereotypically well-meaning but naïve Westerners, hankering after authenticity but unable to fully grasp the imbalance between wealthy tourists and the impoverished locals who service them. Their discomfort when the people they’ve hired on holiday intrude on their lives back home feels like nothing more than their due.
And in a chapter about her disastrous efforts to cultivate a half-acre garden, which breaks from the theme of social embarrassment to take a more philosophical turn, she learns to stop fighting the insects and rodents ruining her plants and accept that nature is their domain, not hers. Even here, though, the incongruous imagery of a molehill materialising in her dining room makes it impossible to keep a straight face.
Currently, she and her New Zealand-born husband Jonathan are setting up a 16-acre nature reserve. What excruciating misunderstandings that has involved remain to be seen.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here