Finally got around to reading our review copy of Embracing the Dragon: A woman’s journey along the Great Wall of China by Polly Greeks, from Awa Press – thanks again youse fullas!

Now this is not a book I would buy, being an almost exclusive reader of fiction and a bit of poetry. Embarrassing but true. I made an exception for The Penguin History of NZ, but even though I relished it, I couldn’t make it all the way through without novel-dipping.

However, Awa Press, with their mission of bringing us quality New Zealand non-fiction, is actually making it easy to take that big step. Embracing the Dragon is about Polly Greeks’ spur of the moment decision to accompany her quite new boyfriend on his obsessive odyssey – travelling the length of the Great Wall of China, a decision that many of us routine- and suburb-bound couch potatoes might think of as … well, insane. And it wasn’t far into the trip that our Pol was thinking along similar lines, having nearly died on their first night on the wall in a blizzard they were totally unprepared for ...

Polly’s style is a bit patchy – as in good solid documentary style writing interspersed with startlingly luminous prose. It’s her first book, but I think if it had been polished any more it would have lost its immediacy and friendly accessibility. Her descriptions are great – this on first seeing the wall:

Imagine a castle wall without beginning or end. Imagine a ripple frozen in time. It is both of these things. It is rock solid. It is a suspended moment of graceful fluidity. Arching over a peak before it plunges down into a valley, there is an instant when the wall is something else too. Reality flickers for a second and the entire mountain range seems to heave. I run my eyes over the spine of a vast crouching beast. Ancient watch-towers stud its length like vertebrae.

Yup, that wall is spooky. And it becomes apparent almost immediately that the wall has personality, presence and moods. So does the landscape, and Polly finds herself hard-pressed not to personify it:

We’re up near the sky again. Although the wall drapes itself over the mountains, the land is too old to wear it with sensuality. If this part of China was ever buxom and voluptuous, it has long ago hardened and wrinkled. The fat of the land has gone, leaving the wall like a disintegrating feather boa wrapped around the bony shoulders of a weathered crone.

Polly Greeks had an incredible adventure in a country where she was the first white woman some local people had ever seen. It was hard and dangerous travelling for her, and as someone who has also done some fairly serious backpacking, it was for me an experience on paper to be savoured and devoured. The only downside really was tedious Nathan, her trekking partner, and on-again, off-again sleeping bag partner. What a dork, Polly, what were you thinking!? But hey, she was travelling with the guy, it was a personal narrative, and as such has to be real. And I get the idea that the relationship dramas were already probably edited a fair bit. Shame she couldn’t have edited him.

So okay. All in all, a great, scratch’n’sniff travel story that definitely had me yearning for my boots and backpack. And as for the Great Wall of China – I’m so there. One day.