Title: The Incredible Journey
Originally published: 1960Dates read: 7/16/18-7/24/18
Back to the Classics category: Classic Travel/Journey Narrative
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.
Author: Sheila Burnford
Sheila Burnford was born in Scotland in 1919 and passed in 1984. She was an only child and went to primary school in Edinburgh. She attended Harrogate College in Yorkshire, England and also studied in France and Germany. Burnford traveled extensively and called North America home for a period of time.
As a young woman during WWII, she was part of the Royal Naval Hospitals Voluntary Aid Detachment from 1939-1941 in England. She worked as an ambulance driver for a majority of that time. During this time, she met and married her husband, a doctor, David Burnford in 1941.
As a young mother and new bride when her husband David was away to war she acquired Bodger an English bull terrier who became her best companion on the blacked-out nights of war. The bull terrier became an inspiration and namesake for one of the main characters in The Incredible Journey she would write years later.
Description on back of book:
Instinct tells them that the way home lay west. And so the doughty Labrador retriever, the rough bull terrier, and the indomitable Siamese case set out through the Canadian wilderness. Separately, they would soon have died. But together, the three house pets face starvation, exposure, and wild animals to make their way home to the family they love.
First sentence:
"This journey took place in a part of Canada which lies in the northwestern part of the great sprawling province of Ontario."
Review:
I was excited to read this because Homeward Bound was a favorite movie of mine growing up. I didn't realize it was a children's book and was surprised at its simplicity. The general story is the same, but there are some definite differences.
The animals never talk. You sometimes can hear their "thoughts" or are told what they are feeling... but it's mostly just action. I love the banter between the animals in the movie and was looking forward to the humor in the book, but there was none. It's a pretty serious book about survival. It was kind of boring to me with basically no dialogue at all.
As the first sentence from the book states, the story takes place in Canada, not the USA. "Chance," the black and white American Bulldog is actually "Bodger an all-white English Bull Terrier. "Sassy" the Himalayan cat is actually "Tao" a male Siamese cat. "Shadow" the long-haired Golden Retriever is actually "Luath" a short-haired Golden Labrador. The personalities are basically the same except Bodger is the old dog and the Lab is the younger one. Luath/Shadow gets the quills in his face and it's Bodger/Chance that comes running/limping out last at the end of the book.
The family consists of 9-year-old Elizabeth, who loves her cat; 11-year-old Peter who got Bodger as a puppy for his first birthday; and Jim Hunter, their father, and main owner of Luath who he trained as a hunting dog. There is no mention of a mother. Jim is a professor and does a year teaching in England, so they leave the animals with a family friend, John Longridge. At the end of the 9 months, John goes on vacation for a couple of weeks and his neighbor is going to take care of the animals. Well, due to the 2-page note and 1 going missing (as in the movie) the neighbor thinks he took the animals on vacation with him.
The animals do come across bears, a raging river, and porcupines - but slightly different. They all meet an old man in the woods, but it's a little girl from a Finnish family that rescues Tao/Sassy after the river. There's no mountain lion or seesaw trick. A lynx tracks Tao/Sassy while he's alone and a big chase ensues. Tao hides in a rabbit burrow and a hunter shoots the lynx. Towards the end, they go into town to get rid of a wolf tracking them and are taken in by a farmer who removes the quills the lab's face... but they leave a few days later to continue their trip. They meet a group of Indians in the beginning, but there's no missing girl or train tracks with a ditch for them to fall into in the end.
When John returns from vacation he tries to figure out what happened, the next day the Hunters return home and he has to tell them the bad news. They try to track down their pets for the next 1-2 weeks. At Peter's 12th birthday, the animals return with much rejoicing. The timing is a little weird, but my guess is that it took them about 3-5 weeks to go from John Longridge's home to the Hunter's home, which is said to be 250 miles apart from each other. The book says on good days they traveled 15 miles.
Overall, it's an OK book - the movie is definitely better. If you have young children, I think this would be great to read to/with them. For adults, I think it's pretty boring. I wasn't expecting it to be so serious - the movie is relatively lighthearted (despite tearing up every time I see Shadow come limping up the hill in the end).
Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Sheila Burnford have the last words:
"Only one thing was clear and certain - that at all costs he was going home, home to his own beloved master. Home lay to the west, his instinct told him; but he could not leave the other two - so somehow he must take them with him, all the way."
No comments:
Post a Comment