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nkmeyers 's review for:
If you leave this book learning nothing more than that there is more than one kind if courage you will have been rewarded for your read .
If I hadn't recently read Looking for Mr Smith I think I would feel quite differently about Graham Ratcliffe's investigative memoir (which is the only genre label I can think of to describe what is presented here).
I wish Ratcliffe had bothered to personally conduct or arrange for 3rd parties to conduct personal interviews with his 'unfriendly' witnesses instead of recounting unanswered emails as dead-ends or asking the reader to go along with him in equating unanswered emails with an admission of guilt or guilty conscience.
But, since he didn't, we have to assume that he is comfortable asking the reader to accept that he'd rather talk person to person with his wife and Friday night pub partner than with the subjects of his investigation. Fair enough, but he seems to want his dear reader to admire his work as thorough anyway because to him it FELT all consuming- there's a double standard here that the reader distrusts immediately.
The problem is that all-consuming doesn't always equal well-researched.
Ratcliffe falls into the same trap as Willis in Looking for Mr Smith - - he boasts to the reader that he's a world class traveller but then silently confesses to being unwilling to get out of his chair and away from his keyboard to visit the subjects of the story - relationships aren't built, motives do not become more clear, too much time passes between the leads and the story's moments of investigative progress.
That Ratcliffe is further willing for the reader to learn that he has the funds and time for business and recreational travel, but is unwilling to spend either time or money on face to face interviews with those who could/should have been stronger voices in this story (though he did once offer an £2,000 uncollected award for information leading to the location of a misplaced magazine) just adds icing to the cake. If Willis had £2,000 when she started her investigation to use to go out on interviews and a friend who shoved her out door she might have found Mr Smith and we'd know a lot more about the Long Walk ;)
The story loses momentum and veracity because the author is unwilling to strategically organize his research or get professional help from librarians, or researchers, or interviewers at the right times. Because he has to do everything himself or ignore it, the reader is only presented with part of the story.
This means that the other voices in the story remain too silent. Since the reader never gets to hear those voices we remain a bit aloof from the storyteller 's journey and the storyteller himself.
There are a couple of important missed opportunities for interviews that the author admits to - both w boukreev and w todd- in each case the author's reluctance to feel uncomfortable or to persist leaves the reader in the lurch.
What the reader learns is that it does take practice and a certain courage to become a good investigative journalist - and that the courage that takes one to Everest may be surpassed in some small ways by that exhibited by beat reporters who interview difficult witnesses almost every day.
Ratcliffe's story suffers from what might be a disjoint desire - to resolve a bitter mystery and to absolve himself of survivor's guilt by writing without opening himself to criticism or conversation with his subjects or his readers - that hubris and concurrent naïveté is the Achilles heel of this story if there is one.
If I hadn't recently read Looking for Mr Smith I think I would feel quite differently about Graham Ratcliffe's investigative memoir (which is the only genre label I can think of to describe what is presented here).
I wish Ratcliffe had bothered to personally conduct or arrange for 3rd parties to conduct personal interviews with his 'unfriendly' witnesses instead of recounting unanswered emails as dead-ends or asking the reader to go along with him in equating unanswered emails with an admission of guilt or guilty conscience.
But, since he didn't, we have to assume that he is comfortable asking the reader to accept that he'd rather talk person to person with his wife and Friday night pub partner than with the subjects of his investigation. Fair enough, but he seems to want his dear reader to admire his work as thorough anyway because to him it FELT all consuming- there's a double standard here that the reader distrusts immediately.
The problem is that all-consuming doesn't always equal well-researched.
Ratcliffe falls into the same trap as Willis in Looking for Mr Smith - - he boasts to the reader that he's a world class traveller but then silently confesses to being unwilling to get out of his chair and away from his keyboard to visit the subjects of the story - relationships aren't built, motives do not become more clear, too much time passes between the leads and the story's moments of investigative progress.
That Ratcliffe is further willing for the reader to learn that he has the funds and time for business and recreational travel, but is unwilling to spend either time or money on face to face interviews with those who could/should have been stronger voices in this story (though he did once offer an £2,000 uncollected award for information leading to the location of a misplaced magazine) just adds icing to the cake. If Willis had £2,000 when she started her investigation to use to go out on interviews and a friend who shoved her out door she might have found Mr Smith and we'd know a lot more about the Long Walk ;)
The story loses momentum and veracity because the author is unwilling to strategically organize his research or get professional help from librarians, or researchers, or interviewers at the right times. Because he has to do everything himself or ignore it, the reader is only presented with part of the story.
This means that the other voices in the story remain too silent. Since the reader never gets to hear those voices we remain a bit aloof from the storyteller 's journey and the storyteller himself.
There are a couple of important missed opportunities for interviews that the author admits to - both w boukreev and w todd- in each case the author's reluctance to feel uncomfortable or to persist leaves the reader in the lurch.
What the reader learns is that it does take practice and a certain courage to become a good investigative journalist - and that the courage that takes one to Everest may be surpassed in some small ways by that exhibited by beat reporters who interview difficult witnesses almost every day.
Ratcliffe's story suffers from what might be a disjoint desire - to resolve a bitter mystery and to absolve himself of survivor's guilt by writing without opening himself to criticism or conversation with his subjects or his readers - that hubris and concurrent naïveté is the Achilles heel of this story if there is one.