Savage, STAR: A Psycho-topography of Place

We are all familiar with the adage ‘‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’’ yet immediately upon glancing at this book, with hand-drawn imagery printed on brown card, and held together by a pink star-shaped elastic band, the reader can tell it is the lovechild of someone artistic. STAR: A Psycho-topography of Place, by Jennie Savage, intriguingly unites fragments of a project concerning a broadcasting event, which explored the specificity of a one-mile geographic area in Cardiff. The audio book forms the conclusion to this project, describing the making process and presenting the main ideas emerging from the archived sound. Though wishing not to focus exclusively on cosmetics, the book is beautifully presented, comprising of lined, plain and brown graph paper. The text varies from calligraphic to standard, and uses black, pink, blue and green ink. There are appreciable doses of artistic sketches and high-quality photographs peppered throughout. This book is not intended to gratify academics in search of theoretical substance, instead it offers a fascinating range of subjective insights into place through local everyday, and oft taken-for-granted, knowledge. The book contains 12 short chapters including the Introduction, in which Savage explains how she explored and mapped STAR (an acronym for the suburban wards of Splott, Tremorfa, Adamsdown, and Roath) through STAR Radio. Savage paints a tale of her curiosities of STAR; she questions ‘‘what is this place?’’ (p. 20), candidly telling that the idea for STAR Radio developed from her own desire to belong to this place, in which she lived. However, though personal, the book is not self-indulgent and features colourful contributions from other authors (Clare Doherty, Andre Stitt, Tom Hall and Brett Lashua, Matthew Yeomans, Zoe King, and Wiard Sterk), in the form of essays that respond to the original project. For the most part, this is an easily read book, but, for me, Chapter 5—an essay by Dr. Tom Hall and Dr. Brett Lashua, who attempt to locate STAR Radio ‘‘in a wider, contemporary fluorescence of interest in cities’’ (p. 80)—was the least accessible, containing flowery language. I have a few quibbles regarding the structure and mechanics of this book. For instance, included within is a DVD of archived sound that represents the voices from STAR (as well as a CD named Walks in STAR). Savage advises that readers listen to the DVD before they read the book, but this instruction, and indeed the guide which navigates the reader through 116 hours of sounds, is not presented until Chapter 4. Notwithstanding this, the archival format of the DVD is user-friendly and organized with headings. Usefully, once audio is downloaded, it can be listened to on a computer, iPod, or MP3 player. Another oversight is that the reader is not