Turtle Diary

In the beginning, Turtle Diary is like a disoriented murmur from under the sea. Russell Hoban writes about turtles, water-beetles, oyster-catchers, whales, and throws irrelevant knowledge about them at his readers. Surviving the first 50 pages, the reader will find a structure that emerges as two loners hold the same thought of rescuing sea turtles from the zoo. Since they are one man and one woman, a romantic encounter is expected given the prevalence of heterosexual presumption.

I enjoyed the narration when I waited for the two loners to meet. Their minds cross each other’s in the indifferent, anti-social thoughts, featuring self doubt and confusion. That is not the best formula for a romance.

I slowly got to understand the meaning of freeing the turtles when I waited for the romantic action to be taken or whatever plot it might be to bring the two loners closer. Putting turtles back to the sea is an attempt of the loners to free themselves from their dull life. They feel like a loser in their middle age and they need a drastic change desperately which preferably does not really change anything. A gesture would be just fine.

But they are difficult people. It is too simple and too easy. Before actually doing it they hesitated and soon they revealed their awareness of the hypocritical nature of such a self-righteous move.

It turned out that it is not about the turtles. It is not a romance of two like-minded loners either. It is dialectics of going back and forth between possessing something to reassure one’s existence and releasing one’s grip of something to achieve one’s own freedom. It is unlikely to be answered by either this or that. Like most questions of life, it is possibly a matter of a combination of this and that. And a perfect life is to go back and forth to find a balance.


Quotes I like:

“Polperro seems to me like a street-walker asking for money to maintain her virginity.”

“The ends of things are always present in their beginnings.”

“When a ewe licks a new-born lamb all over I believe that’s called owning it but the ewe never really owns the lamb.”

“I looked at the telephone after I’d put it down. Sly thing, getting words out of me I’d no intention of saying.”

“I’ll never cease to be amazed by the fact that people uncomfortable in themselves can give comfort to other people.”

“She looked heavily understanding, which irritated me. I felt there wasn’t anything to be understood.”

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