Sixty Degrees North

Starred review from May 15, 2016
A longing for home sends the author around the world.In a memoir remarkable for its intimacy, wisdom, and radiant prose, Scottish singer/songwriter Tallack (Fair Isle: Through the Seasons, 2010), who was born in Shetland and lives in Glasgow, follows the 60th parallel, the border marking the harsh, remote northern regions from the more populous south. His purpose, though, is not to produce a travelogue about ruggedly exotic landscapes but to ask a philosophical question: "where am I?" From the age of 10, living in the Shetlands with his mother and brother after his parents divorced, he felt alienated and uprooted, which later intensified into "an unshakable feeling of exile and of homesickness" and an urge to find a place where he belonged. His father's sudden death, when the author was 16, further fueled his restlessness and inspired his journey. Leaving Scotland, he headed west to Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Siberia, St. Petersburg, Finland, Sweden, and Norway before returning home. At each stop, his observations include not only a close examination of geology, geography, flora and fauna, but also history, myth, art, and literature. Tallack discovers a palimpsest of lives: he traces the arrival of Norsemen in Greenland at the end of the first millennium C.E., for example, where they encountered peoples "whom they called skraelings: wretches," with whom they co-existed in "an uneasy balance." The author offers a capsule history of opulent, besieged St. Petersburg, whose architecture, an amalgam of European styles, reflects the grand designs of various czars and czarinas. He also fell in love, unexpectedly, with Kamchatka, in desolate Siberia: "there was a stillness at its heart that seemed to calm, temporarily, the restlessness in my own." He felt the same "deep centredness and settledness" in Fair Isle, an island off Scotland, and stayed for three years before loneliness impelled him back to Shetland. Throughout, Tallack renders descriptions of his emotional landscape as delicately as his painterly descriptions of the physical world. An enthralling meditation on place.

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June 1, 2016

When musician, photographer, and writer Tallack was a teenager, his father was killed in an auto accident. This loss changed his life: gone was his connection to family in the south of England and the possibility of attending school in the city. Instead, the author headed above the 60th parallel circle of latitude in desolate and isolated Shetland. While both confronting his grief and accepting his new location, he began daydreaming of the people and places located near that line around the world, which separates north from south. From remote Greenland, Fort Smith, Canada, and Ninilchik, AK, to cosmopolitan St. Petersburg, Russia, and a final push across Finland, Aland, Norway, and Sweden, he discovers the world he so often imagined during his teenage years. The resulting journey delves into the local culture, dispelling myths and seeking common bonds. The history is captivating and adds context to each place visited, though the background for the historical facts is not always apparent. More history lesson than travelog, this book balances history, travel, and culture on an interesting path around the world. VERDICT Readers interested in the regions and peoples around the 60th parallel will be drawn to this work.--Zebulin Evelhoch, Central Washington Univ. Lib.

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