Impossible Owls

By Brian Phillips, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £16.99

Review by Dan Brotzel

This collection of extended pieces by leading American magazine writer Brian Phillips is a rich mix of derring-do, insightful analysis and truly creative non-fiction.

It begins with an account of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, a ridiculously gruelling annual Alaskan event, which Phillips follows by air, with the help of a daring pilot, Jay Baldwin, who is prepared to drop down on remote stretches of ice with limited time and fuel.

The characters and extreme conditions are engrossing and the knowledge Baldwin later died leading an expedition adds poignancy to the peril.

Some essays are factual and analytical; others more artistically ambitious; sometimes they are both.

Man-Eaters looks at the chequered efforts of conservation movements in the Indian jungle. The Little Gray Wolf Will Come charts the life and career of Yuri Norstein, a brilliant Russian animator, who’s been working on his unfinishable masterpiece for decades.

Once And Future Queen, a meditation on the meanings of royalty in the 21st century, centred on the Duchess of Cambridge, is breathtakingly beautiful and original. And my favourite piece, In The Dark, tells the story of the author’s childhood — and reflects on the fallibility of memory — through an examination of the sci-fi shows he watched growing up.

Phillips is funny, sharp, obsessive and readable.

A very high-quality collection.