A Dark Place in the Jungle

by Linda Spalding

In A Dark Place in the Jungle, writer Linda Spalding travels to Borneo's threatened jungles on the trail of orangutan researcher Birute galdikas. What she finds is an unholy mix of foreign scientists, government workers, tourists, loggers, descendants of Dayak headhunters, Javanese gold miners, and half-tame orangutans. Galdikas, along with Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. Formed the famed trio of "angels" Louis Leakey encouraged to study great apes in the wild In 1971, she went into the jungle to study orangutans and decades later emerged with a rundown empire crumbling around her. Along the way, as poachers and timber barons slaughtered orangutans by the hundreds, Galdikas evolved into Ibu, the great mother of orphan orangutans, blurring the line between ape and human, tourist and scientist, Eden and everything else. To the orangutans, this was perhaps the cruelest blow of all. Spalding's quest takes her from the offices of Galdika's foundation in Los Angeles to the crocodile-infested Sekonyer River in Borneo, where she confronts the sad, corrupting failure of a woman trying desperately to mother a species to survival; the dangers and temptations of ecotourism; and the arrogance of the human inclination to alter the things we set out to save. Here is a book that shows us no paradise is safe from the machinations of man, and no one immune to temptation.

Genres: Nonfiction

269 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Linda Spalding, Kansas-born Canadian fiction and nonfiction writer, often explores world cultures and the clash between contemporary life and traditional beliefs. Born in Topeka, she lived in Mexico and Hawaii before moving to Toronto, Ontario in 1982.

Spalding's work has been honoured numerous times. Her non-fiction work, The Follow, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award and the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize and she has since received the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the Canadian literary community.

Her novel, The Purchase, won the 2012 Governor General's Literary Award.

She has two daughters and is currently married to novelist Michael Ondaatje. Linda, her daughter Esta, and Michael are also on the editorial board of the Canadian literary magazine, Brick.

Reviews

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really should have 2.5 stars, rather than 3, but since I did keep reading it all the way through and since there were things that I enjoyed learning about, I went for the 3. It is run through with petty anxieties and quarrels. Those of the author have only petty consequences (anxieties about her relationships with her daughters, her hurt feelings due to encounters with Gladikas etc) and they get very old very quickly, but the petty quarrels that Galdikas has gotten into have had a potentially horrible result for the remaining orangutan population in Borneo. I have long been interested in the big apes and the 3 women who pioneered the study of them, and have read all their books. This book, which illuminates some of the inside tensions and developments with orangutans, is frightening. It shows what can happen when a passion becomes so overwhelming that it forces a person past the boundaries of ethics. Galdikas has done some important and vital work in the field, but has she now become the equivalent of a crazy cat-lady? The corrupt government in Indonesia, the lack of money there, and the long distance btw it and the US have also allowed her to spend the funds that she has raised in a way that would probably horrify a number of her donors. It was sobering to see what can happen to an idealistic woman and a very worthwhile cause.

[Bambi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A woman tries to follow Dr. Birute Galdikas into Borneo to understand her work to save orangutans. Birute is the orangutan equivalent of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey and perhaps just as controversial as the latter. Good discussion of the conflict between saving wild orangutans and caring for orphaned ones.

[Ayelet Waldman]

Okay, so I know Linda. But I still loved this book. Seriously. I'm not just bullshitting to keep from embarrassing myself in front of a friend. I can believe what that NUT JOB Birute Galdikas is doing in Borneo. She's got to be stopped. I worked myself up into such a rage over this that I called Linda to holler my fury. She, of course, had put all this out of her mind years ago.

[rebelsofie · Rating 3 out of 5]

walaupun bahasa inggrisnya rada susah, tapi yang namanya orangutan, selalu jadi fave

[The Chicks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jane's pick

[Mark Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

The examination into the world of orangutan preservation and the role of Birute Galdikas is thought-provoking even though I learned more about the author herself than I really wanted to.

[Shari LaRue]

Combines a travel journal with being a naturalist and discovering the plight of orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra. Good read