What do you think?
Rate this book
The Lion's Eye: Seeing in the Wild
Joanna Greenfield dreamed of traveling to East Africa to study one of the last known populations of wild chimpanzees. When she was offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance, the young student set off from peaceful Kenya into politically hazardous Uganda. From there, a small team of guides led her into the mountains.
In stunningly evocative language, Greenfield depicts the beauty of the rainforest and the determination required to wait for one transcendent encounter in the wild. But even one of the most remote places in the world is not immune to terrifying man-made conflict. Greenfield and her team are robbed by poachers and harassed by soldiers. Eventually, it becomes too dangerous to continue her research, though she knows she may never be allowed to return.
The Lion's Eye is the true story of one woman's burning mission to connect with animals -- an adventure story and against-the-odds quest for a wilderness few of us have ever glimpsed.
In stunningly evocative language, Greenfield depicts the beauty of the rainforest and the determination required to wait for one transcendent encounter in the wild. But even one of the most remote places in the world is not immune to terrifying man-made conflict. Greenfield and her team are robbed by poachers and harassed by soldiers. Eventually, it becomes too dangerous to continue her research, though she knows she may never be allowed to return.
The Lion's Eye is the true story of one woman's burning mission to connect with animals -- an adventure story and against-the-odds quest for a wilderness few of us have ever glimpsed.
- GenresAfricaBiography Memoir
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
1 person is currently reading
46 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 15, 2009
Joanna Greenfield's memoir of the months she spent in Kenya and Uganda in 1983 was absorbing and insightful for a number of reasons. She gives a concise overview of the history of animal behaviorists as well as some of the fundamentals of the discipline. More importantly (to me, at least), she provides some philosophical depth, punctuated with facts about transcendentalists, through musings about man’s relationship to nature. She could almost be a new Thoreau or Wordsworth. Almost. What I didn’t like were the constant references to her loss of depth perception. While I’m sure this is a life forming issue for Ms Greenfield, it didn’t resonate with me past the first or second passage about it. Also, I really empathized with her need for Africa and was impressed with her spunk…until she returns, as was her dream, in a short afterword and leaves again a few months later without finishing her new research contract. Joanna’s spunk—her refusal to leave the rainforest despite serious illness, a torrential rainy season, and threats from soldiers—really impressed me. If she achieved her dream and returned to the savannah to study primates a few years later, only to leave after a few weeks because she didn’t get along with the house manager, I didn’t want to hear about it. I’d rather keep the courageous, wilderness-loving, Swahili speaking young woman who performed solo research in an unforgiving wildernessin my memory. She was well worthy of an autobiography.
December 12, 2012
Just not a very good read. The topic matter should make this a fabulous book but I just can't feel any empathy for her character or rally understand what it was like to be there. The writing seems stilted at times, maudlin at others and she is clearly trying to tie something in with her lack of depth perception...it doesn't work.
December 2, 2014
Despite this being a memoir about a seemingly intelligent and driven woman, she... wasn't. Fast read because it's so easy to skim.
March 6, 2023
Far more boring then it should have been.
September 28, 2012
The writing is beautiful, evoking images that stay with the reader long after the book is set aside. I enjoyed the memoir, but felt it was rushed at the end and should have ended earlier when her initial trip to Africa was over. The chapters on everything that happened after that are important, but I didn't feel we had enough information at the end about the second trip to Africa and why it ended the way it did. That may be another story for a follow-up memoir at some point. :)
The descriptions of the jungle and savannah brought back memories of my own travels in Africa.
My absolute favorite passage was a description of how we breathe in the lands we visit (pp. 134-135). This resonated with me because I've traveled so much in my life, and the idea that we carry the places we visit within us is fascinating. Here it is:
"You don't think, Breathe in, breathe out, as you travel. Breath comes naturally, as does vision. But you are breathing, in and out, differently. As you move from air to air, fragments and molecules of the land and the people around you sparkle into your lungs and embed themselves there. Over time, fluids moisten the atoms and - pulling away the dust and potato peels, the clothing dye and dandruff, the infinitesimal ions that make up wood and truck - sluice them out into the blood, where, overwhelmed in water, they are absorbed. All blood must run through the kidneys, so it is here that the miniature universes, these pastiches of all the landscapes through which you have passed, and these portions of each person met, are filtered out into the serum of the body, and evacuated in urine. Your body can take any nation, and any human, and turn them into water. Pole, pole, slowly. You eat the land. Be careful where you go; you are what you breathe.
"Humans breathe deeper when excited. Many parts open in the body under the influence of adrenaline: the heart, the nostrils, the pupils of the eye. The lungs expand and pull in air, preparation for pleasure or fear. Either way, we feel more intensely and react faster with oxygen and all those little bits of world pumping fast into the blood. Thus, the more excited we are, the more air we take in and the more we absorb the world through which we travel. Breathe deeply enough, for long enough, and you will become part of the world, filled to the brim and clogged with its clays and dust.
"I believe that even if we pass through quickly, there are landscapes that are particularly ours, that open our lungs wide in a great gulp of air so deep and sharp that bits of that place embed themselves into the spongy hidings of the alveoli, so deep that neither fluid nor oxygen can pull them out, and we are a part, forever, of the land we have chosen.
"Africa has more dust than anywhere else; it is closest to the sun. Thousands of explorers returned to Europe or America with those shards of Africa embedded in their lungs. They never settled down into their pleasant lives. Put something deep enough inside yourself, and you feel a need for more."
The descriptions of the jungle and savannah brought back memories of my own travels in Africa.
My absolute favorite passage was a description of how we breathe in the lands we visit (pp. 134-135). This resonated with me because I've traveled so much in my life, and the idea that we carry the places we visit within us is fascinating. Here it is:
"You don't think, Breathe in, breathe out, as you travel. Breath comes naturally, as does vision. But you are breathing, in and out, differently. As you move from air to air, fragments and molecules of the land and the people around you sparkle into your lungs and embed themselves there. Over time, fluids moisten the atoms and - pulling away the dust and potato peels, the clothing dye and dandruff, the infinitesimal ions that make up wood and truck - sluice them out into the blood, where, overwhelmed in water, they are absorbed. All blood must run through the kidneys, so it is here that the miniature universes, these pastiches of all the landscapes through which you have passed, and these portions of each person met, are filtered out into the serum of the body, and evacuated in urine. Your body can take any nation, and any human, and turn them into water. Pole, pole, slowly. You eat the land. Be careful where you go; you are what you breathe.
"Humans breathe deeper when excited. Many parts open in the body under the influence of adrenaline: the heart, the nostrils, the pupils of the eye. The lungs expand and pull in air, preparation for pleasure or fear. Either way, we feel more intensely and react faster with oxygen and all those little bits of world pumping fast into the blood. Thus, the more excited we are, the more air we take in and the more we absorb the world through which we travel. Breathe deeply enough, for long enough, and you will become part of the world, filled to the brim and clogged with its clays and dust.
"I believe that even if we pass through quickly, there are landscapes that are particularly ours, that open our lungs wide in a great gulp of air so deep and sharp that bits of that place embed themselves into the spongy hidings of the alveoli, so deep that neither fluid nor oxygen can pull them out, and we are a part, forever, of the land we have chosen.
"Africa has more dust than anywhere else; it is closest to the sun. Thousands of explorers returned to Europe or America with those shards of Africa embedded in their lungs. They never settled down into their pleasant lives. Put something deep enough inside yourself, and you feel a need for more."
October 20, 2015
I thought this book was boring and I didn't like the style. I don't know why -- but it just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it was the fact that her eye issues seemed easily solved by glasses and I didn't understand why she spent twenty plus years going around not being able to see properly. If there was a good reason she should have explained it. I only read a couple of chapters. Her eye issue seemed to be foundational to the book so she should have made an effort to explain it thoroughly and be authoritative. Instead she was vague and poetic about it which seemed likea cop out.
Want to read
May 23, 2016#
NC
Own in paperback.
FS: "In the dark leaves of the rain forest, we evolved from the ancestral tree shrew."
LS: "The savanna is still too bright to look at, but perhaps, if I can hold the good eye closed, in the whirling haze of the other eye, I will see lions."
NC
Own in paperback.
FS: "In the dark leaves of the rain forest, we evolved from the ancestral tree shrew."
LS: "The savanna is still too bright to look at, but perhaps, if I can hold the good eye closed, in the whirling haze of the other eye, I will see lions."
August 26, 2013
Reading this for the second time and her beautiful writing and interesting vision emerge where they didn't the first time around
August 26, 2014
Poetic without pretense, this memoir is both thoughtful and propulsive, calmly urging you from chapter to chapter on a vibrant and captivating tour of Africa.
February 23, 2016
I started this book and put it down about half way through. I did pick it up again and finished the second half faster than the first. I did enjoy it overall but it was a forced read to start.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews