The Road to Little Dribbling – Bill Bryson

Twenty years since ‘Notes from a Small Island’ was published Bill Bryson takes time, and a trip, to re-appraise the state of his adopted nation, and finds like many of his generation, it is slipping slowly away from his understanding.

The notional geographical peg for his wildly meandering route is a straight line that is the longest possible within mainland Britain, running from Bognor Regis on the south coast to Cape Wrath in the far north of Scotland.  Fear not those of you off this corridor for he still visits a place close to you.

His observations are inevitably shot with perspicacity, wit and laugh out loud humour.  From sitting his British citizenship test at Eastleigh to his bemused arrival at Cape Wrath lighthouse he both celebrates and pokes fun at the British way of life.

So far, so Bryson; but as is often the case the acquisition a bus pass leads to an onset of grumpiness, which surfaces often in this volume.  He rails at many changes in society – the decline of the high street, the ubiquity yet uselessness of computers, the intrusive noisiness of folk on mobile phones – that rankle, before shrugging them off and continuing his search for the positive.

As well as humour and grumpiness is a rich vein of informative storytelling as he roots out little known or under-reported facts, such as the ‘system’ for numbering roads, and sheds light on local people and places whose position in history has undeservedly been neglected.

Funny, wise, acerbic, informative, and above all entertaining.

A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” So says Bennie Salazar to his old mate Scotty in the final chapter of the book, finally unlocking the mystifying title. By then both have them have been pushed around quite a lot, as have another dozen or so characters, who pop in and out of each other’s lives as snippets of their stories emerge in no chronological order.

Meeting them at various stages of their life from wild youth to staid middle age (though some don’t make it that far) illustrates how people change, adapt, or in some cases stay just the same in the face of events, circumstances or experience. Egan even has a dip into the near future with some astute projections that are already recognisable in 2018 some eight years since publication.

Each chapter’s narrative style reflects its main protagonist; quite a feat given their variety in age, gender and personality. And each provides an entertaining, well written piece for the reader to try to slot into the jigsaw that is the havoc wreaked by the Goon Squad.

An entertaining, invigorating and memorable read.

Review of 2017

The fortnightly reviews were successfully maintained throughout 2017, which meant 26 books reviewed, of generally high standard. Only eight authors had been previously read, and authors new to me included five encountered on the Bookpacking journey commenced in the year (South America has been reached).

From the books read seven are picked out to be particularly recommended: four good serious reads (though each contains some humour); a humorous novel (that has serious things to say); a young adult novel (of import to old adults too); and a non-fiction book for anyone interested in maths, the Simpsons or preferably both. Thumbnail sketches are given below for each (to see the full review go to the bracketed month).

Books for serious readers:

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray (Mar) – A sprawling roller-coaster of a book relating the pulsating events of one term at Seabrook College for Boys; humour, angst and tragedy affect students and staff alike and though Skippy dies, life is re-affirmed.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Ben Fountain (May) – Bravo Platoon’s ‘victory tour’ following its televised fire-fight in Iraq culminates at Dallas Cowboys’ thanksgiving game where contradictory forces can no longer be contained.

The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood (Jul) – Three ladies who lunch in Ottawa each try to deal, in their own way, with the return from the dead of a common friend whose funeral they had attended and each, for their own reasons, celebrated.

The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen (Sep) – A forensic examination of grown-up family relationships in which each member has a turn centre stage before their stories and viewpoints coalesce in a fine denouement.

Humour:

A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman (Oct) – A grumpy widower’s attempts to join his beloved wife initially make him a figure of fun, but as the back story emerges and his social horizons widen, there is more to Ove than meets the eye.

Nonfiction:

The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets – Simon Singh (Feb) – Many of the scriptwriters for the Simpsons TV series are maths grads and often sneak titbits of mathematical significance into the show, as explained here in entertaining fashion.

The Descent of Man – Grayson Perry

Cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry sets out in print many of the ideas he presented in his “All Man” TV series.

He challenges the accepted norms of masculinity, questioning both their validity and usefulness of what he sees as out-dated values, and placing the blame for much of mankind’s woes – violence, crime and warfare – on them.

He also sees the damage ‘manning up’ can do individual men left unable to deal with emotional issues.

It is all very persuasive but there is no blueprint to fix the problem. Indeed he seems to accept there is a difficulty defining what the exact problem is, just that there is something wrong with the society’s current model. He really just issues a plea to allow men to be people rather than men, and find their own way unhindered by past generations’ baggage. Some hope!

It is a short thought-provoking work with, perhaps inevitably, the artist’s own pithy illustrations the most impactful feature.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe – Romain Puertolas

The preliminary stage of the journey made by the fakir (who is not so much a mystic as a con man) is straightforward enough, arriving at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport by a scheduled flight from India, thence by taxi to one of that city’s IKEA stores.

His mission there, to buy a new bed of nails, has a quirky if unlikely sound to it; his plan to pay for it with a photocopied (one side only) one hundred Euro note smacks of the ridiculous.  He uses the same note to temporarily pay his taxi fare, temporarily as he retrieves it from the driver’s wallet by means of an attached invisible piece of elastic.

Those readers amused by this premise and willing to suspend critical facilities may enjoy the remainder of the book, which continues in similar vein with improbable coincidences covering up a thinly worked plot otherwise full of holes.

The initial scene describing someone’s first experience of an IKEA store raises a smile but once trapped in his wardrobe and shipped of on his journey (more silly than extraordinary) the fakir’s facility for comic observation fades. Instead introspection grows as he bumps into both refugees and celebrities on his whistle stop tour of Western Europe.

On none of the potential levels - humour, satire or self-discovery – does the book really deliver. It is not laugh out loud, the satire doesn’t bite, and the morality tale fails to convince.

If, as claimed, it was a number one best seller in France then Guy De Maupassant, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo must be turning in their literary graves. Or maybe it just lost something, or quite a lot, in translation.

Killed at the Whim of a Hat – Colin Cotterill

Jimm Juree’s nascent career as ace crime reporter on the Chiang Mai Mail is ended by her mother’s sudden decision to sell the family home and move from the urban north to the rural south of Thailand. There each of the family find their own way to cope as new, mainly unenthusiastic, owners of the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant.

Her mother sits in the shop all day; brother Arny mainly works out on the beach; Ganddad Jah sits and watches out for passing cars; and Jimm guts fish and wonders if sister Sissi (who used to be brother Somkiet) got it right in refusing to leave Chiang Mai.

Then, in a part of the country where nothing ever happens, things begin to happen; criminal things much to Jimm’s delight. She’s soon back on the beat, investigating two skeletons found in a buried camper van, an unlikely murder in a Buddhist temple, the death of a dog and, closer to home, the truth about her absent father.

The first person narration works well and Cotterill’s writing as a thirty-something feisty Thai woman of independent outlook passes muster. The self-depreciating humour and a nice line in metaphor make the reading light and enjoyable. The barbs at officialdom, politics and corruption have a tone of resignation rather than indignation.

There is one good cop locally, and Granddad Jah stirs himself to help, so Jimm is not working alone. And as she makes progress in at least some of her enquiries she finds the country bumpkins don’t all fit in with her preconceptions. Maybe life down south would suit after all if she gave it a chance.

At nearly 400 pages the jaunty style of prose begins to wear thin towards the end and the technical denouement has much less charm than the excellent opening, but in the main an easy and passable read.

Game of Thrones – George RR Martin

This is just book one of A Song of Ice and Fire; the existence of another six tomes for me was a disincentive to ‘get into’ GoT that finally I have overcome.

First up, the maps at the front set the scene and demand a few minutes perusal, forming as they do the board upon which the game will be played. Next the Prologue sets the tone: dark, foreboding, violent. It’s clearly fantasy-land but we are in familiar territory: swords and shields; horses and wolves; mainly just men and women.

Dynastic rule, bonds of fealty and chivalric knights (but Sers not Sirs) are the order of the day. But the rule of Robert Baratheon, in place a dozen years since the violent ousting of ‘Mad’ King Aerys II of the House of Targaryen, is beginning to look under pressure.

His right-hand man, Jon Arryn, has died in his bed but under suspicious circumstances; the King’s in-laws of House Lannister are untrustworthy and probably plotting something; an infant survivor of the purge of the Targaryens is overseas planning revenge; and in the north, beyond the fortified ice-wall, ancient forces are stirring.

Responsibility for guarding the northern frontier lies with the House of Stark, and it is the members of that family that mainly drive the narrative forward, each chapter recounting events through the eyes of one or other of them: Lord Eddard; Lady Catelyn; children Robb, Sansa, Arya and Bran; and bastard son Jon Snow. Two other viewpoints provide balance: Tyrion, unfavoured dwarfish son of Lord Lannister; and Daenerys, the exiled Princess and true heir of the Targaryen dynasty.

It is undeniably engrossing stuff as the action ricochets between the protagonists, spread over not just the Seven Kingdoms but also beyond the ice wall in the north and across the sea in the grasslands of the nomadic Dothraki warriors. The prose is rich but punchy rather than purple. Although invented terms abound, they are cleverly suggestive of their meaning and used in context so do not jar and no glossary is needed.

Closing in on page 800 it is clear not all issues will be resolved. But despite the fact that six more books loom ahead GRR Martin does not prevaricate, springing deaths and dismemberment on the reader before ending this volume not, thankfully, on a cliff edge but satisfyingly paused for the next instalment.

The jury is out on whether to resume reading or resort to the box set.