bill bryson the road to little dribbling review

The litany of his dislikes and disapprovals is long and fervently expressed: hair gel, litter, Trip Advisor and his 'reflex loathings,' which include power walkers, 'those vibrating things restaurants give you to let you know when a table is ready,' lawyers, pigeons and Douglas Brinkley (a particularly unkind reviewer of one of Bryson's previous books).ĭespite all this cantankerousness, his strange encounters and scathing put-downs are genuinely hilarious - and who doesn't despise pigeons and litterbugs? At Bryson's age, he can (and does) feel entitled not only to be done with such ugliness, but also to express his displeasure in ways most of us only dream of daring to do.Īnd when he sees beauty and wonder in the world, he is rhapsodic - even evangelical - about it. This upsets, nay, utterly discombobulates Bryson, who relates numerous stories of confrontations with people he bemoans as 'all the hopeless, inept f***wits that God has strewn along the Bill Bryson Highway of Life.' Of course those things exist (and Bryson makes every effort to seek them out), but mostly Britain today is a lot like anywhere else, which is to say full of people who are going to work and driving cars and shopping and don't necessarily have the time or energy to be cheerful and polite all the time.

But his version of it is stubbornly rooted in nostalgic theme park territory: bucolic landscapes, picturesque fishing villages, old pubs, red telephone boxes. Twenty years after his affectionate paean to the Britain he fell in love with (and married into), Bryson travels the country again, only to find that - surprise, surprise - it has changed.ĭon't get me wrong - Bryson loves Britain.

In Britain, Bryson's adopted home, his most popular book is 'Notes From a Small Island,' which sold like hot teacakes and was once voted 'the book that best represents England' in a readers' poll. 'A Walk in the Woods' may not have been a particularly good movie, but it was a rather good book, and it remains Bryson's bestselling work in America. Plenty of authors have had their books adapted into movies, but only one has been played by Robert Redford - and that's dear old Bill Bryson, with his frumpy tweed jackets and owlish spectacles.

Bill bryson the road to little dribbling review