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Rating: 
Summary: The Arch of Kerguelen
Review: A fine translation from the French but this book really suffers from the lack of photos. For those readers interested in the series of French islands in the southern Indian Ocean this is a fine book and I doubt there will be many disappointed readers.However, if you wonder what Kerguelen might look like in reality, this book is not for you.
Rating:
Summary: The Arch of Kerguelen
Review: A fine translation from the French but this book really suffers from the lack of photos. For those readers interested in the series of French islands in the southern Indian Ocean this is a fine book and I doubt there will be many disappointed readers.However, if you wonder what Kerguelen might look like in reality, this book is not for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Mysteries, mysteries
Review: I liked the book in French, and French friends who read it enjoyed it. OK, there's some of that lyricism the French enjoy and English-speakers are a little allergic to, but the tone, overall, is not that different from the Kerguelen articles Matthew Parris wrote for the (London) Times a couple of years ago (you can read them on the Net). The sense Kauffmann gives us of the Kerguelen landscape is probably accurate - his descriptions strikingly agree with mountaineer/doctor André Migot's 1956 account, The Lonely South. Unfortunately this English edition is a little bit couldn't-care-less. A big black mark is someone's decision not to bother tracking down various material that was originally in English. So instead of genuine extracts from Rallier du Baty's 1908 book, 15,000 Miles in a Ketch, what we have here is passages translated back into English from the French translation of 15,000 Miles, and similarly an English translation of a French translation of the wonderfully obsequious dedication (p71) that Captain Robert Rhodes put on his chart of Kerguelen, and an English translation of a French translation of the allegedly unfindable epitaph (p197) on Captain Matley's gravestone. A pity because, although Kerguelen is now French, its past was largely Anglo-American and there was a chance here to give us some authentic voices from those days. Peculiarities and implausibilities also keep jumping out of the page at you. For instance, randomly and by no means exhaustively, why has Major Couesnon turned into a captain by page 103? If you want to check on where Port-aux-Français and Christmas Harbour are located, be prepared to use your powers of deduction, because the map provided calls them something else. Minus 41 Fahrenheit, we are told, isn't harsh as temperatures go (p42) (the arithmetically challenged really should double-check their centigrade-Fahrenheit conversions). The sun 'shined' for an hour (p42). The blurb drastically relocates the Kerguelens to SE of Australia. Would soldiers march through the wilds in 'raincoats', what kind of fog makes a raincoat flake, and how 'brand new' would a flaking raincoat look (p129)? In the Williams engraving of J.C. Ross's ship Terror - it was used as the cover illustration for one of the French editions of the book - those sailors supposedly hauling on the sails (p.166) are keeping a very low profile. What are Decauville tracks (p105)? (For the answer to this, look no further than the big Harraps French-English dictionary - though maybe someone could have saved us the trouble.) Emperor penguins (p196) are Antarctic birds - the tall penguin species found on Kerguelen is the king penguin. A ship, the Lozère, 'comes in contact with a raised part of the sea bed' (p190). (Or did it maybe just run aground?) What are 'modified makeshift repairs' (p162)? Do trains do 'fast switches' (p80), and if so, what are they? Do loaves have 'soft, damp interiors' (p46) (as opposed to being, say, moist and pleasantly chewy inside)? Isn't it a little odd to talk about an islet being 1,650 feet from the shore (p197), as if someone had been out there with a very long tape measure? Frankly, does it make any sense to talk about earth mounds 'adapting themselves to the ground' (p157) (ie gradually settling or subsiding)? You might get the wrong idea about Captain Peretti's wife, who apparently spent a lot of time 'thinking up' underwear (p179). If you wanted to catch a cross-section of the local insect population, would you position your traps inside a hut (p72) or outside? Doesn't having numerous Lake Josettes and Danièle Valleys (p58) in the one small island confuse people? If Christmas Harbour is so difficult to enter (p.165), why didn't Captain Cook tell us? In heavy rain, would cardboard boxes 'regain some of the shape they used to have' (p110)? Mysterious place, Kerguelen - but maybe not quite as mysterious as some of this would suggest.
Rating:
Summary: Strangely dispassionate and haunted work
Review: I read this book after hearing it recommended on NPR. It was hard when coming to the book to disassociate Kauffmann's incredible and horrible experiences as a hostage in Beirut from my appreciation of the book itself. Every piece of ennui, every flat, sad phrase seemed to take me back to the chair in which he was blindfolded and chained for three years. I think it would be impossible not to attribute some significance to his past, but it is something Kauffmann fails to address in any way at all. (It is mentioned only in passing on the book jacket.) What we find instead is a troubled man coming to terms with a troubled place. But here his insights aren't very deep. He seems utterly amazed that this place, so far away from anywhere, is still France. This is an glimpse into the Gallic mindset that perhaps only an Englishman could appreciate. He also feels very impressed with being there. He seems to pinch himself a lot. Wow, I am in Kerguelen! Apparently, it's windy. His attempts at a back story -- his attempts to show why this place has haunted him for so long are unconvincing and rather dull. He includes what history he could find about the place, but, sadly, there isn't so much. For an example of this type of writing at its finest, I would check out Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia and Kevin Patterson's excellent The Water Inbetween. Both of these books come from similar emotional places, but engage the reader in more interesting and varied ways.
Rating:
Summary: Strangely dispassionate and haunted work
Review: I read this book after hearing it recommended on NPR. It was hard when coming to the book to disassociate Kauffmann's incredible and horrible experiences as a hostage in Beirut from my appreciation of the book itself. Every piece of ennui, every flat, sad phrase seemed to take me back to the chair in which he was blindfolded and chained for three years. I think it would be impossible not to attribute some significance to his past, but it is something Kauffmann fails to address in any way at all. (It is mentioned only in passing on the book jacket.) What we find instead is a troubled man coming to terms with a troubled place. But here his insights aren't very deep. He seems utterly amazed that this place, so far away from anywhere, is still France. This is an glimpse into the Gallic mindset that perhaps only an Englishman could appreciate. He also feels very impressed with being there. He seems to pinch himself a lot. Wow, I am in Kerguelen! Apparently, it's windy. His attempts at a back story -- his attempts to show why this place has haunted him for so long are unconvincing and rather dull. He includes what history he could find about the place, but, sadly, there isn't so much. For an example of this type of writing at its finest, I would check out Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia and Kevin Patterson's excellent The Water Inbetween. Both of these books come from similar emotional places, but engage the reader in more interesting and varied ways.
Rating: 
Summary: Explores the islands, their wildlife, and their history
Review: The author makes a pilgrimage to the islands in the southern Indian Ocean which have been called the most desolate on earth since their discovery in 1772. His travelogue, The Arch Of Kerguelen, explores the islands, their wildlife, and their history in an intriguing study.
Rating: 
Summary: Islands of Desolation
Review: This book coupled with viewing the photos on this website, http://ile.kerguelen.free.fr/accueil.htm, paint a tale of how lonely a place can be. I have not seen many books on the Kerguelen and this book just whetted my interest in reading more about this place. If there had been more illustrations and maps I would have added another star.
Rating:
Summary: A cloudy window on a fascinating land
Review: This book is neither a travelogue (in the usual sense), a natural history treatise, nor a serious historical overview of the French islands of Kerguelen (also called Desolation Island.) Although there are some evocative phrases that approach description (for example, "it's the land of 'the eternal late autumn.'"), author Jean-Paul Kauffmann never seems to get around to actually describing much more than the ever present wind. Why travel to Kerguelen? Well, there's a rock arch. And a failed explorer. And it's difficult to get to. But overwhelmingly, one gets the feeling that the author made this journey because he couldn't think of anything better to do. Not that that's a bad idea, mind you. But once he's arrived, he doesn't seem particularly interested in either noticing details or passing them on. His historical snippets of earlier explorers are truncated and flimsy. And he seems completely uninterested in the other human beings whom he encounters. Perhaps it's because most of them are scientists. I betray my interest in natural history by pointing out that every time Jean-Paul Kauffman gets to an interesting fact or description of this most remote of all places on earth, he punts it by either declaring that science has taken the poetry out of nature-- the man has obviously never read Loren Eiseley-- or adds it as an unexplained addendum ("...the meteorite lying amid the ruins is like the dead soul of Port Jeanne d'Arc..." Hey, wait a minute, what meteorite?) Despite its flaws, or possibly because of them, this book entices you to learn more. One hopes that the next adventurer to Kerguelen arrives with an actual sense of adventure and the descriptive power to pass it on.
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