While I'll be the first to admit that the writing in this true-life adventure is not the most literary or distinguished, A Sailor, a Chicken, an Incredible Voyage: The Seafaring Adventures of Guirec and Monique by Guirec Soudée is so much fun to read. I'd already read (and thoroughly enjoyed) the picture book version of this adventure, The Hen Who Sailed Around the World (by the same author), so I was excited when the book for adults was translated into English. (I could have read it in the original French (there's that college degree coming in handy), but it would have been a bit tricky to get my hands on a copy of the French edition here and I didn't want to trouble my friend in France to find and ship me a copy.)
Anyway, this book delivers exactly what you'd expect from the title: a personal narrative of the author's adventures. He set off from Brittany at age 22 to sail solo across the Atlantic--he picked up Monique, the little red hen, by a happy chance in the Canary Islands--and ended up making his way up to Greenland, where he overwintered on the ice, through the Northwest Passage to Alaska, all the way down the coast of the Americas around Cape Horn near Antarctica, and over to the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa before zigzagging his way from there across the Atlantic a couple more times to get back to France.
It was a trip that was harrowing at times but full of beautiful landscapes and fascinating characters in different ports of call; however, it is the presence of the hen moved me to read this book. What can I say? I love my hens. Having read the book, I still can't imagine my own hens enjoying a boat trip, though Monique seemed to thrive aboard ship and was happy and healthy enough to lay eggs for the author to eat. In my view, the book is worth reading for the photos alone (where else will you see a chicken enjoying the Arctic ice?), though I got pretty quickly swept up in the story itself, curious to see how the author would deal with the many challenges he encountered in his long voyage. If you're interested in sailing, or chicken stories, or memoirs, A Sailor, a Chicken, an Incredible Voyage is worth reading.
