Risk Wise
As Polly Morland heads for Portsmouth Bookfest to discuss her new book Metamorphosis, I review her previous book Risk Wise, one of my Books of 2016. Also recommended: The Society of Timid Souls.
Risk surrounds us.
Polly Morland’s book Risk Wise, a slim elegant volume of non-fiction, illustrates and examines the depression and grandiosity that accompany our everyday milieu of risk: depression, because we can’t cope with the anxiety; grandiosity, because we believe somehow (indeed, need to believe) that we can evade these ubiquitous threats, by being smart, prepared, or lucky.
Anxiety’s counterpoint, posits Morland, is Risk-Wisdom.
To institute our journey of gaining Risk-Wisdom, Morland takes us on a tour of risk-takers, risk manipulators, risk trainers and risk analysts. Through her gentle interviews, insightful and generous, weighty and humane, these specialists guide us with their various subtle crafts: the vulcanologist, the ballet dancer, the air traffic controller.
Morland writes well. How I envy the succinct chapters. This appealing book touches upon so many familiar areas of life, consequential yet slim. I admire its brevity and clarity, the poetic turn of the sentences, the engaging rhythm of the chapters, weighing interview and exposition, personal and global, psychological and sociological. All is made clear through these delicately managed interviews, with minimal academic arguments and statistics sparingly scattered.
The photographs (by the hawk-eyed Richard Baker) add verve and life to the words of the interviewees. I had the feeling that I had seen and heard these nine interviews, as if in a TV documentary, yet somehow a more rarefied experience than telly watching.
Morland herself hides in the shadows of her own prose: she is an excellent interviewer, allowing us to get to know her subjects through their own words, their lives, their gestures and omissions. She occasionally allows herself a judgement, and, even more rarely, a poetic summation of the upshot of an interview.
If news of threat, hazard and disaster overshadows your verve for life, this is the tonic you are seeking.
Read more at pollymorland.com
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