Rating: 
Summary: What a loss...
Review: I was given a hard copy of this book for a school prize at just about the time he discovered he had AIDS. If I could write like this I would be a happy woman. I think the last commentator has missed the point. Chatwin doesn't spell everything out for you - what is a well crafted book worth especially given the Internet and the transience of the printed or spoken word? No, his ideas are still evolving and revolving around my head. I'm a resource investigator and I'm hungry for quirky details and love to connect seemingly disparate ideas into graceful patterns. That's how we, as a species, have survived - making sense of the senseless. This was not a book about aborigines but about curiosity and how movement enables us to continue to see the world anew. My father had died two years before I read this book which is long enough to become a cynical old sod - I really was very closed in and this book loosened me up a bit. Since then I've read every word Chatwin has written and every word I know of that has been written about him and I really wish that I had been old enough to get to know him. Such people are so precious - not because they are rare, although they are that. They are precious because they are far more influencial in their quiet way than politicians, media moguls and stars. They don't set out to be influential they are simply natural kings. Enjoy - but most of all be and do.
Rating: 
Summary: THE BOOK FOR THE REAL AUSTRALIA
Review: I'm an italian reader and i'd like to suggest this book to all the people that love to travel. Is the first work that speaks to a large odiens about the life of native australian people. Is interesting if you like to discover where our civilty is walking in the wrong side. Never think you are better than a person is different of you.
Rating:
Summary: Bruce Chatwin: searcher of the reason for living.
Review: In "The Songlines",Bruce Chatwin portrays his personal odyssey to answer the question, "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" His narrative is funny,yet heart-warming, and touches one at a deep, emotional level. In his quotes - which appear very suddenly and seem out of place, to begin with - it slowly becomes very apparent that he is really seeking the elusive Golden Fleece. He follows the aborigines and their Songlines in the hope that they can show him the real reason why he exists. The quotes are very revealing as to the way his thoughts go. They tell us that he is a very sensitive and vulnerable man who is unsure of where life leads him. The book should be read slowly and carefully and seen as the author's search for answers about who he is. The book should NOT be read as a travel-book; that would demote the value of this story.
Rating:
Summary: Refreshing!
Review: It does not take an anthropology degree to gain great perspective from the refreshing glimpse Bruce Chatwin has given us into aboriginal Australia. His adventures and insights have deep meaning to those of us who profoundly love these people and the land of the Australian continent. It does not gloss over the problems and difficulties of the modern day, but charges head on into analysis of them, and I love and cherish this book. Bruce's writing style may seem unfocused only if you actually miss the messages--otherwise, an outstanding read and I am sad we have lost his voice to forever.
Rating:
Summary: Chatwin finally throws down his theories on nomadism
Review: Late on in the Songlines, Bruce Chatwin writes: 'Before coming to Australia, I'd often talk about the Songlines and people would inevitably be reminded of something else'. This sentence seems to sum up 'The Songlines'. The book begins as a travelogue of Chatwin's travels across Australia, written in a clean, crisp, pared down style - reminiscient of Hemmingway, one of Chatwin's foremost influences. He attempts to unravel the stories behind the Aboriginal songlines but does this in a roundabout way, largely talking to non Aboriginal experts such as Arkady, the son of a Ukranian exile rather than Aboriginals themselves.
Approximately halfway through the book, the Songlines turns into a repository for a vast array of extracts from Chatwin's notebooks, chronicling his lifetime of travels. An enchanting jambouree of quotes from famous thinkers anthropological and psychological theories on the innate nomadic instincts of man, witty recollections of conversations Chatwin encountered with characters on the road and even what appears to be an alternative story of the fall of man, stemming from the Biblical story of the sedentary Cain murdering Abel, his footloose brother, thus setting in place the destruvtive history of civilised man, choosing to settle in one place rather than wander according to his natural instincts.
The Songlines appears to be the filtered product of Chatwin's failed attempt to write a book on nomads. As he explains in one of his notebook entries, the following Chinese ode taught him the futility of this: 'Useless to ask a wandering man advice on the construction of a house. The work will never come to completion'. The result is a work of immense scope but rather limited structure and coherence. As if Chatwin towards the end of his life, exasperated with how to present the vast quantity of material he had accumulated on travel and wandering, decided to throw it all down at once saying 'here it is, make of it what you will'.
Consequently, I am not sure exactly what to make of the Songlines. For more scholarly, coherent theories on the themes Chatwin explores in this book, I suppose it would be better to read the works of some of the gurus, such as the African archeologist Bob Brain, that Chatwin probed for knowledge throughout his travelling life. But for an interesting mixture of potted theories on nomadism and a well crafted travel journal that really brings out the dry heat and bush scrub of Central Australia, the Songlines is extremely entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: An Exhilaratingly Complex Experience
Review: Ordinarily, I say it is difficult to single out one book as significantly above others when I've read a steady stream of good ones, but THE SONGLINES belongs in a rarefied class. It has immediately moved into the pantheon of my all time favorites. THE SONGLINES is a trip to central Australia, to Aboriginal country. In the 1980s, Chatwin found it to be a hardscrabble territory under an unforgiving sun, where the remote, sparse population mostly gets along in corrugated metal shelters. The sociological, political and economic condition of the Aborigines compares to that of the American Indian. Most of the white European locals don't quite seem to know how or why they have been plunked down in this weird, other planet. Hooking up with a savvier group of anthropologists and social workers, Chatwin looks for the songlines of an Aboriginal mythology, sacred paths spun out across the inscrutable terrain, each marked by a song that carries identity and connection to the prime movers at the beginning of time. Along the way, Chatwin includes portraits of the people he meets, historical notes and readings of anthropology, evolutionary theory, and philosophy. In this far away land, he finds the stimulus that helps him organize a lifetime of readings and memories that come together in a meditation on the human need to travel and to make and share meaning. Looking at the contemporary scene and people, he can see back to the very emergence of humans. Chatwin casts a spell you do not want to be broken. I suggest that if you do not know much about him, resist that strong impulse to start reading biographical notes and commentary on the book until after you have finished the book. None of what's out there will deny you its excellence; it just might poke a confusing hole in the reality it has created. The book is an exhilaratingly profound experience in the accessible guise of a pleasant, insightful travelogue. Ask why its author considered it fiction after you've read it.
Rating:
Summary: An Exhilaratingly Complex Experience
Review: Ordinarily, I say it is difficult to single out one book as significantly above others when I've read a steady stream of good ones, but THE SONGLINES belongs in a rarefied class. It has immediately moved into the pantheon of my all time favorites. THE SONGLINES is a trip to central Australia, to Aboriginal country. In the 1980s, Chatwin found it to be a hardscrabble territory under an unforgiving sun, where the remote, sparse population mostly gets along in corrugated metal shelters. The sociological, political and economic condition of the Aborigines compares to that of the American Indian. Most of the white European locals don't quite seem to know how or why they have been plunked down in this weird, other planet. Hooking up with a savvier group of anthropologists and social workers, Chatwin looks for the songlines of an Aboriginal mythology, sacred paths spun out across the inscrutable terrain, each marked by a song that carries identity and connection to the prime movers at the beginning of time. Along the way, Chatwin includes portraits of the people he meets, historical notes and readings of anthropology, evolutionary theory, and philosophy. In this far away land, he finds the stimulus that helps him organize a lifetime of readings and memories that come together in a meditation on the human need to travel and to make and share meaning. Looking at the contemporary scene and people, he can see back to the very emergence of humans. Chatwin casts a spell you do not want to be broken. I suggest that if you do not know much about him, resist that strong impulse to start reading biographical notes and commentary on the book until after you have finished the book. None of what's out there will deny you its excellence; it just might poke a confusing hole in the reality it has created. The book is an exhilaratingly profound experience in the accessible guise of a pleasant, insightful travelogue. Ask why its author considered it fiction after you've read it.
Rating: 
Summary: where are the aboriginal people in this rambling mess?
Review: People seem to have strong views about this book & about the late Mr. Chatwin. For me, it was a huge disappointment. Perhaps it is because the friend who loaned it to me had built it up so much that it could not match the expectations he had set.
But at a minimum, I expected Chatwin to share personal experiences with the native people of Australia. Throughout most of the book, however, Chatwin interacts w these people thrrough an intermediary, a Russian/Australian. Very rarely does he actually speak to an aboriginal person. There are encounters with wild characters who seem to have had normal sensibilities baked out of them by the harsh Australian sun, which are sometimes amusing. As to the songlines themselves, however, he learns of them exclusively through his Russian friend. To top it off, the last 1/2 of the book is almost exclusively a series of notebook jottings collected over the years on the general topic of the nomadic life. Most are quotes from many other people, strung together. I understand Mr. Chatwin was dying of AIDS as he wrote this book, & may have wanted desperately to make some sense of his own nomadic wanderings, indeed, his own life. But please, do not buy this book thinking you will gain some insight into the aborigines. You will be deeply disappointed by the scant interaction Mr. Chatwin in fact shares with the reader.
Rating:
Summary: A great work of fiction--repeat FICTION
Review: Prior to publication Chatwin had huge arguments with the publishers. He said the book was fiction but the publishers said it was non-fiction. Naturally enough the publishers won the battle. Hence, my local library has the book in the Australian travel section. Amazon does too. Chatwin is now emerging from culthood. This is a good thing because it means readers can read his work without all of the emotional baggage that was attached to Bruce Chatwin's life and lifestyle. The Songlines will endure.
Rating:
Summary: A travelogue that needs no slide show
Review: Since my first reading four years ago, I've returned to The Songlines time and time again. Chatwain not only captures the thrill and awkwardness inherent in most journeys, but also gives us a view of aboriginal culture unlike any other. You'll truly "wish you were there."
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