Because Amazon UK does not post its reviews further afield I have copied those that have been posted in the UK so that my foreign readers can read them before deciding whether to buy the book.
5.0 out of 5 stars More than just a life, this is thought provoking and food for the soul
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 November 2024
This is the most haunting and beautifully written memoir. Many autobiographies tell a selective story, moulding the narrative to create a partial view; it is rare to find such an unflinching gaze – unsentimental but tender. Her prose is matchless and her characters live and breathe. I so enjoyed this book
One person found this helpful
Jac Aranda
5.0 out of 5 stars A world wide safari following the spoor of George Eliot
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 November 2024
“Review of Safari of a Patchwork Pilgrim
My impression is that the author has just completed a magnificent work of art by crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on a masterpiece whose first flowering appeared in 2013. This was the unique presentation of a History of the Evolution of Human Thought in poetic form. It was the book called ‘Involution’, which remains as true today as it did then. It was so unfamiliar then that few in the academic world were able to relate. However, the organic ground for that flower, which gives the work its context, was an extraordinary life whose story has just been told in this new book, ‘The Safari of a Patchwork Pilgrim’. It is a life of learning, freedom, disappointment, inspiration, accident or amazing coincidence, observation, experiment, hard work and ever-more learning.
Philippa has now managed to complete this as a compelling read, brought onto the page with the help of her Daimon. Lurking in the shadow also, is the very strange story of the connections with the English author George Eliot, which turns out to have improbable coincidental echoes in the life of Philippa’s own family with its African origins. The story is complex and deeply engaging and a thoroughly good read.”
One person found this helpful
Liz
5.0 out of 5 stars An autobiography of an amazing journey of life
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 November 2024
I was privileged to receive a pre copy (ARC) of Safari of a patchwork pilgrim. Reading this autobiography I felt I was walking with Philippa through every chapter. Her unique talent for the description of her life was honest and raw. Her journey through ups, downs betrayals, lack of love, constant searching through countries, class divides, self examination and her yearning to learn are described in a no hold barred narrative but also with humour and compassion. A thought provoking read and makes one think how our DNA carries down and helps form some of our traits from our ancestors.
An Inkling
5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary spiritual life that finds its place among the ‘ordinary’
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 November 2024
I was delighted to be gifted with a pre publication ARC copy of ‘Safari”…
This is a truly outstanding book which tells the story of an incredible life. The author’s ability to take the reader with her at every step leaves a reader believing that they have lived through this life with her. The descriptive writing is so vivid that I could smell the heat of Africa and feel the comfort and safety of an England tragically now destroyed. The dichotomy between them with vastly different experiences and characters in each is as fascinating as the story itself.
Now to the author: Philippa’s life has been essentially one of hardship with deep grief and loss. Yet, there are many moments of wonderful humour and surprising stories in the face of almost unbelievable adversity and, at times, savagery. The conversations between her and the Daimon, told with light-hearted objectivity, added a philosophical dimension of universal relevance. This book is not only about her life but about all of us searching for meaning, understanding and our hunger to be spiritually uplifted. It left me profoundly moved.
I am not sure that this review does it justice.
One person found this helpful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 November 2024
ARC
I don’t think I have ever read a work of literature as beautiful and profound as Philippa Rees’s autobiography, and neither before have I found writing that takes the reader to the outer reaches of his or her understanding and beyond, to a place where prose turns into poetry for sheer necessity and the considerable emotional power of this book takes over. Writing of this calibre is a rarity, as it is also to find an autobiography that goes far beyond the annals of ordinary experience to become a voyage of mythic proportion for both the author and the reader.
There are two “presences” who participate in this highly creative voyage of self-discovery: the author’s Daimon or creative spirit, who accompanies her on her journey and brings a deeper awareness and understanding of her experiences in an endless stream of highly profound observations; and the ever-present George Eliot, who shares the same “stable of ardent and stoical loneliness” as the author. This close affinity between both writers is not surprising because Philippa Rees writes some of the most poetic and psychologically acute portrayals and observations of individuals that I have ever encountered.
There is so much in this utterly engrossing and deeply inspiring life story, which includes individuals of extraordinary interest, such as a foreboding, Bavarian, archetypal god-mother of the Third Reich, or maybe the Fourth, a Miami attorney whose refreshing street wisdom and highly effective pragmatism makes him more the embodiment of a Philip Marlowe than a lawyer, or a mysterious German philosopher who sees into people’s souls and perceives their predicaments at a glance. Somehow it seems only natural that such unusual, maverick personalities should find themselves in Philippa Rees’s orbit.
Of particular interest are a series of deep and intense transcendental experiences which provided the author with the necessary insight to conceive an alternative theory of evolution – Involution, rooted in her inner journey through collective consciousness and universal memory. A journey, most would say through madness, and a few would speak of mystical experience, while her Daimon spoke of “her deep dive into the Akasha,” and that “most will call it schizophrenia and assume you are clothing it in rational disguise.” The author wrote, “I was sampling the inner experience of what others call time, drifting through memory, not merely my memory but all memory. The Akashic Record was available, and I dived below its turbulent tides.”
For me, however, the real power of this book is emotional, and it is a considerable feat of the author to be able to convey feelings in the way she does so that the reader can truly feel them. Whether this be the harrowing predicament of the author as a very young child in South Africa, or a nightmarish situation resulting from seemingly irreconcilable cultural differences in a very moving chapter about the author’s return to Swaziland for her mother’s funeral, Philippa Rees has an uncanny ability to take us to those places of deep feeling where words no longer suffice.
Throughout this life story synchronicity is woven into its remarkably colourful tapestry. “Coincidences” that defy both time and space and hint that something mysterious is going on beneath the surface of normal life suggest, as the story unfolds, that everything that happens is profoundly connected.
There is so much to contemplate on, so much to learn, so much to marvel at, and above all, so much to enjoy in this incredibly beautiful and very moving autobiography.
A many-layered Autobiography
When I reviewed Involution, An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God for De Numine (journal of the Alister Hardy Society, issue 56, 2014) I wrote that I was fascinated by the life of the author, and her forty year odyssey to write that magisterial work. My curiosity has now been satisfied by the publication of Safari of a Patchwork Pilgrim which tells the tale. It is an extraordinary autobiography – scrupulously honest and totally mesmerising. It is also beautifully written and presented on luxuriously smooth silk paper with her own patchwork illustrations.
While reading it, I was so immersed in Philippa Rees’s life that I found myself begging her not to take some of the decisions she took, but was then swept up the in the consequences of her actions. I felt drawn into her fate, growing up in South Africa and later living in England and I got to know those around her, her mother, grandmother Marna and the incomparable Ndaba, as well as the men and the daughters. Underlying everything was the obsession with the theory of involution and the inescapable drive to research and write her magnum opus, at whatever the cost. And there was indeed a very heavy cost.
There are many levels to the book, in addition to the autobiographical story. The whole oeuvre is inspired by her Daimon, enhanced by her mystical experiences and the interconnectedness of people and events. Throughout her life there was a strong sense of resonance with George Eliot, quotations from whom head each chapter, and with whom profound links are revealed at the end.
The book was written to give the context for Involution, and to illustrate the theory through Rees’s own experiences. She has indeed led ‘an extraordinary, ordinary’ life, and her hope is that this account of her adventures will lead her readers to look anew at their own lives. She says that however seemingly ordinary a life is, ‘every one is precious in itself and as a fractal of a greater harmonious life in which nothing, not an incident, not even a thought, is irrelevant’. This touches the soul of each reader.
Dr Marianne Rankin
(Author of ‘An Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience’)
In fairness, I should also admit that there was an anonymous rating of two stars, without any words to explain it. It seems Amazon carefully filters good reviews that fail to carry the imprimatur of ‘verified purchase’, but unexplained anonymous malice or depredation is passed without questioning!
Here is a link to the book’s page to order the eBook or the printed paperback.
INVOLUTION: Science and God: Reality Redefined 