Review: Slow Down and Relax with this Special Book
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 26, 2011
Read this book if you have ever fancied roaming the seven oceans as a passenger on a container ship.  Maria Staal takes you with her on her journey from Italy, through the Suez Canal to the Middle East, to Singapore and South Korea, then back again to the Mediterranean and all the way across the Atlantic.  But the highlight of the book is not so much the colorful ports of call as the crew of the container ship with whom she shares this adventure.  Consisting of five or six German officers and twenty-odd Philippine crewmen, the story of how Maria creates her own niche and routine in their midst, and how they learn to accept and embrace her as part of their world makes fascinating reading.There is the cook, Rodel, who has quite a challenge suiting the culinary preferences of these thirty people from various countries.  Every Saturday he reaches out to the German officers and serves Eintopf, a kind of stew, the only dish Maria can't stand -- but by the end of the journey she has grown to like it.  There is the Captain, who has a surprisingly soft heart and finds himself paralyzed by indecision when one of his fellow officers experiences a personal crisis that puts everyone on the ship in danger.Travel books always involve a quest, and Maria's quest in this story is to compile a kind of guide-book for the passengers who ride this container ship to help them find their way in all the different ports of call.  The shipping company has offered her free passage if she will put together this book.Along the way we learn how containers are loaded on and off the ship, and how dangerous the job can be.  Another thing that was new to me was the concept of "ship lag," the idea that travelling across time zones and resetting your clocks day after day disturbs your sleep patterns.  Having never taken a ship myself but having flown across the ocean many times, I had always thought travelling by ship would be a nifty way to avoid jet lag altogether.  Wrong!While reading this book I kept hoping there would be some action, a real crisis, maybe an encounter with modern-day pirates or something.  But the level of excitement never rises above the excitement of another thousand miles covered, or the sighting of dolphins, or returning to the ship just in time before it was due to weigh anchor.  Maria moves from one day to the next and from one ordinary shipboard event to the next, over a period of three months.  She develops a friendship with nearly every member of the crew, and with the other passengers, and we see these friendships develop as they eat and talk and work together.  We are conditioned to expect suspense and action in books and movies and television, so when a book comes along that is completely lacking in it, it stands out.  I realized the lack of suspense and action was completely intentional and it ultimately became a great part of the attraction of the book.This was a very special book, and I am looking forward to reading the sequel.