Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

Product Information

It’s the most powerful, honest account I’ve ever read about how nature can shape a person and how interactions with wildlife can stay with someone for ever. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is a sweet story about a boy's idyllic childhood exploring nature, though. Everything seemed alive in that scintillating moment and as the gleams gyrated and glittered I imagined I could see their tiny twinkling hearts, seeding the sparks that made them so very vivid.

I got this book, as I expect many, or indeed most, of the others who own it did, because I'm a fan of Chris Packham.

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt at ease in the fields and woods around his suburban home. No, it's a stupid device to make boring non-events into tortuously long passages where nothing happens other than several things are overly described, and then ignored forever. Instead the book is a series of beautifully written but often deeply disturbing snapshots of Packham as he grew up. I was reading some of the book out loud so I wasn't the only one suffering, and it took me several minutes to get through the first sentence of one early chapter, because it began with the word "Upfalling" and I couldn't stop laughing.

Alongside that are his end-of-chapter discussions with his therapist in September 2003, shortly after attempting suicide. I knew quite a lot about Chris anyway but you just have to read this in his own sweet and unique words because it’s truly written so incredibly beautifully. I finished reading this book last night, but even having slept I find it difficult to describe how it makes me feel. At the centre of the book is his relationship with the kestrel he kept; this reminded me of the excellent H is for Hawk.

An talented piece of writing putting the reader in a position to almost see through the authors eyes. He would spend hours outside looking for specimens, poring over his collections and boiling carcases to get to the bones. He is a confirmed outsider - almost overwhelmed - but determined to do things his way, on his terms.

Knowing that the camera on my phone wasn’t working I still got my other half to pretend to take a picture of Chris and me, so I could get right up close to him! At the end of each 'chapter' there is is a few pages describing therapy sessions that Packham went to as an adult shortly after trying to commit suicide. Unlike any memoir I've read; written as if it were at the same time a novel and a journal, it clearly was a deep source of catharsis.

Packham is eloquent with an attention to detail that is quite astonishing, you could say that obsession is his middle name, but it is not surprising when you learn he suffers from Asperger’s. Chris describes with such wonder and immaculate detail how rapturous and spectacular it feels to discover the natural world. Chris seems remarkably unconcerned by these attacks, but he deserves our support even if he might shrug them off anyway. I grew up watching him on THE REALLY WILD SHOW as a kid and continue to watch him on SPRINGWATCH as an adult.