Celebrating fifty years since publication, the exquisite modern classic, Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban, is a bittersweet story of loneliness, ennui and renewal in 1970’s London. It’s told through the alternate diary entries of soon-to-be acquaintances, William and Neaera, a forty-something bookseller and children’s author respectively. Both lead quiet, solitary lives, enlivened by regular visits to London Zoo, and both are drawn to its giant sea turtle aquarium, a wretchedly confining ‘glass box of second-hand ocean’. Compelled to set them free, they join forces and embark on a touching and richly metaphorical mission to release them into the open sea.
We begin with William, a bookseller, muser, and boarding house resident in south west London. Having been deserted by his wife and two daughters, William’s days revolve around the bookshop and such solitary pursuits as watching tube trains trundle along the District Line. His days off work can be hard to fill, the ‘quiet ambush’ of Sundays particularly difficult, but increasingly William finds himself returning to the turtle enclosure, his curiosity about the turtles’ lives becoming a fixation.
In the wild, sea turtles migrate thousands of kilometres, William imagines the zoo’s free counterparts swimming through golden-green waters. Here however, one almost expected to find a meter in their ‘little box of sea…where they had to put in 5p to keep the water circulating’.
The notion of confinement troubles him more and more, he can relate to it personally. Consumed with turtle thoughts, he is becoming ‘strange and unsafe’, a feeling that intensifies the day an arty-looking lady comes into his shop, looking for books about turtles. This is Neaera, who William instinctively recognises as a kindred spirit, the kind that is destined to become his partner in amateur activism.
In turn poignant, funny, and wonderfully strange, Turtle Diary tells a tale of stultified lives and unexpected rejuvenation. Neaera’s life is just as sedate as William’s. In her case, she is a children’s author, surviving on two royalty cheques a year. Struggling with writer’s block, her days are spent in search of a spark of creativity and the courage to step outside the comfort zone of her moderately successful book series.
Both characters have been dwelling beneath a pall of gloom, day after grey London day, just going through the motions. Attempts at distraction through self-improving activities (William’s being particularly bizarre) have proven fruitless. After their initial encounter at the bookshop, serendipity brings them together at London Zoo and a plan is hatched, involving turtle-kidnap, a Ford Transit van and a night-time dash to release them off the Cornish coast. With a flourish of bookseller style, William quotes from Moby Dick as they set off, the dramatic passage where the ship ‘blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic’.
Or in their case, ‘Blindly plunged like fate into the lone M4.’
Fans may be interested to learn that it was adapted into a film in 1985. The screenplay was by Harold Pinter, with Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley starring as William and Neaera. A marvellous accompaniment to Hoban’s splendid novel of two lonely people seeking an antidote to being ‘nowhere and unhappy’.
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban is published by Penguin, 198 pages.
