Fingers in the Sparkle Jar cover art

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

A Memoir

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Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

By: Chris Packham
Narrated by: Chris Packham
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About this listen

Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn't do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there with a kestrel, a real live kestrel, my own real live kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I'd climbed through a hole in heaven's fence.

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham was only at home in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love - and that would change him forever.

In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the '70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn't understand him. Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you've ever heard.

©2016 Chris Packham (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks Animals Biological Sciences Children's Studies Entertainment & Celebrities Environmentalists & Naturalists Outdoors & Nature Professionals & Academics Science Social Sciences Celebrity Heartfelt Inspiring Thought-Provoking

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There aren't many books that I have listened to that have straight away put me into the author's world, but this one did. Chris has a way of describing things and situations like no one else in my opinion........his description of reading his dinosaur book at the dinner tablet is pure magic and at one point I realised that I was nearly breathless as if I was saying the words. I will listen to his story again and more than likely again! It's a perfect story of highs, lows and every other emotion inbetween. Thank you Chris, you are a genius.

Perfect!

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I am a similar age to Chris and this book brought back many memories. It made me laugh (and cry) and helped me through 2020 lockdown with glances back to my own childhood. Well done and best wishes for the future.

A must for any 70’s kid with a love of nature and the great outdoors

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Not a linear story, not a classic autobiography, nor even a typical wildlife book, but so much more than any of these.

Honest, powerful and lyrical, allowing us to enter his world and see it through his and others' eyes.

Best book I've read in ages.

Utterly transcendent

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I am so, so glad that I chose this book to listen to and to read. On the superficial level it was a delight to be reminded of items from the past, not least (Watneys) Party Seven can of beer that held seven pints. I had entirely forgotten they existed. Added to that Packham’s passion for Punk explained much I never could understand. The Key to this book is the subtitle of ‘Lessons in Life and Death’. The way in which Packham’s love, social rejection, alienation, isolation, awkwardness, sufferings, joys, skills, thrills, exaltations and disappointments are drawn is superb. To say it is a privilege to read the book sounds a bit ‘naff’ but it is true. His descriptive skills are rich and brings the reader into his world. There are significant sections which are prose poetry and these deserve reflecting on at leisure. The narrative’s shifting between times and first/third person points of view are very well done and telling. This book deserves as much attention now as Barry Hines’ ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ did from it publication in 1968 (it also deserves to be filmed). The authenticity of the narration by the author has its drawbacks. The speed with which he performs some passages is so swift that you fail to appreciate and register what is being said - and this disappoints you when those passages are so wonderfully good. I tried to listen at 0.75 speed, but is was ineffective.

A Genuine Privilege With A 'But'

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loved it couldn't stop listening, read with passion and emotion on this a personal journey.

brilliant

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With several members of my family being "eccentrics" the Aspergers diagnosis fits now. This brave and incredible sharing lets me see somewhat into the heads of those we always thought just bloody-minded and awkward to actually realise that it's just different wiring inside. Thank you Chris. This has been really valuable.

An insight into Aspergers

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This work is an utterly unexpected soul exposition. The poetry of the descriptive language used render some passages worthy of a book of their own. The accuracy of the description of the true depth of despair felt is recognisable to others who have been in that dark place and renders this book worthy of special attention. This is no wildlife exploration adventure book. It's an exploration of the human condition in a time when this species is insulated and disconnected from its natural environment, yet yearns for that true connection and sense of meaning that only reconnection with the earth and nature, in all its glorious manifestations, can answer and satisfy.
Chris, your book blew me away.
Thank you.

UnexpectedlyAstounding.Poetic.Honest.Self-Rending.

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As an 80 year old this brought back times I thought I had forgotten. I have been diagnosed as having Aspergers two years ago and Chris has been an inspiration.

So many memories

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This is wildlife presenter Chris Packham's story of his childhood and adolescence. With his all-consuming passions for wildlife and his obsessional behaviour, the boy Chris knew that he was different, that he wasn't programmed to empathise with others - he just couldn't be like other people, least of all the other pupils at school (he was diagnosed in his 30s as having Asperger's syndrome). The anguish that this caused him - being the victim of brutal, heart-breaking bullying; knowing that he either talked too little or too much; the cringe-making attempts to connect with girls; the attachment to Anna in the pornographic magazine he found in a hedge - are detailed in acute, self-aware detail. Later on he details his feelings when he was suicidal on two different heart-rending occasions, and these offer insights which give positive understanding into into the mind-sets of those in such a dark place.

The flip side of the tortured anguish is Chris's passionate love of wildlife of every kind and, when younger, of dinosaurs about which he knew every fact there was to know. His fascination leads him to eat toad larvae to see if their molecules would sharpen his vision; to cycle off on night wildlife adventures; and become obsessed with otters. His greatest love was his rescued kestrel which was, as Chris writes so beautifully, 'something shiney I had caught with my heart' and which he tended and trained with meticulous care and devotion.

The 1970s background with all its minutiae of period detail - the Z Cars, Angel Delight, electric fires, Punk Rock - make the whole vibrantly real. The content is superb but I do have reservations about the writing, which is why it gets a 4 rather than 5. I can see that Packham intends the passages about the wildlife to convey his own young self's ecstasy which he experienced when with creatures, but he overdoes the prose. I found it overblown - far too many adjectives, metaphors (sometimes strained beyond meaning) , similes, adverbs, nouns made into verbs... just far too dense. Fewer would have been more effective. Sometimes his words are brilliant inventions - such as when he says at school when everyone else starts going to drunken parties at the weekends, he does his best to 'de-exist'. Also I'm not sure that Packham, makes the best narrator. He tends to put too much excitement into the wildlife passages to convey that same ecstasy, but for me it detracted.

But don't let that reservation put you off - this is a very special story and the incident where Chris tries to save a fox caught in the water with a snare around its neck is tremendously powerful and left me literally gasping. You won't hear a story like this anywhere else.

The Call of the Wild

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Where to begin? Poignant, funny, illuminating, incredibly descriptive at times. The man is a genius and I have loved every single word that he spoke. The world needs more like him, but do we deserve it?

Fabulous on every level

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