Europa! Europa! (Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson)

Member Name: Karaoke_James

Product:	Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson
Date:	10/03/02 (240 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast paced, Very readable, Hugely funny

Disadvantages: Maybe a little dated now

One Sunday morning a few years ago, I came downstairs to the sound of tittering in the front room. On entering, I found my father sat in a chair with a copy of The Mail on Sunday's 'Night and Day' magazine, a smile on his face and chuckling at regular intervals.

My father has emitted laughter easily enough at the cinema or watching TV, but I'd never seen him tickled so much by the written word so naturally I had just to find out what he was reading.

His source of amusement was at the back of the magazine - an article written by the American traveller and journalist Bill Bryson. For about eighteen months in the late nineties Bryson wrote a column for Mail on Sunday under the heading 'Notes from a big country', in which he wrote entertaining anecdotes and observations about the way of life in his native USA.

So having discovered Bryson that morning, I went on to find that he had already in fact written whole books about his touring. As things stand he has published six travel books; namely 'The Lost Continent' (about travels in small-town America), 'A Walk in the woods' (The Appalachian trail), 'Neither here nor there' (Europe), 'Notes from a small island' (UK), 'Notes from a big country' (USA - collected articles from his Daily Mail column of the same name) and his latest book 'Down Under' (Australia - I'm sure you guessed that for yourself!).

Out of these I have read 'Notes from a small island' (probably his most well-known one - ITV also made it into a brief series), 'Down Under' and have just completed 'Neither here nor there'. Bryson has also written two books about language called 'Made in America' and 'Mother Tongue'.

THE PREMISE

Whilst in his youth, Bryson spent several weeks backpacking across Europe with a contemporary of his known as Katz. As he reached his late thirties (Bryson is now
50 - this book was published in 1991), he decided to retrace that journey across the continent, this time on his own. 'Neither here nor here' entertainingly recounts details of this nostalgic trip, as Bryson details the customs, architecture, scenery, people and cuisine of the places he visits, noting how things seem to have changed (or not!) since he was a young man.

REVIEW

The presentation of the book is excellent. The cover is nicely colourful, depicting a blue-coloured carpet decorated with golden stars and littered with a few famous European emblems such as a Dutch windmill, a German bear jug and the leaning tower of Pisa (I don’t know why that is on the cover – Bryson doesn’t even go to Pisa in this book!).

The book is just over 300 pages long and divided into 22 chapters, each chapter (with three exceptions) concerning itself with one particular place/city. Hence one glance at the contents page will show by what route Bryson travelled around the continent. His journey is neatly divided into very readable chunks – chapters average out at about a dozen pages in length, varying from just seven pages on Istanbul to nineteen pages on Yugoslavia.

My favourite comment about a Bryson book comes from The Times' review of 'Notes from a small island' that remarks it is 'not a book that should be read in public for fear of emitting loud snorts'! Indeed, nearly every review you read about his work will tell you it is genuine laugh out loud humour. They tell you no lie. Bryson's best jokes do not merely bring a smile to the face, they induce uncontrollable titters that to build in momentum the further you get towards the end of a paragraph.

As an example, I’ll quote you a small piece from the chapter detailing his visit to Istanbul.

'The one truly unbearable thing in the city is the Turkish pop music. It is inescapable. It assaults you from every restau
rant doorway, from every lemonade stand, from every passing cab. If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anaesthetic to background accompaniment of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what Turkish popular music is like.'

I’d love to mention others but that would only spoil the enjoyment of the book for you, so let me just assure you that there is plenty more where that came from. The chapter on Paris is simply littered with gems - I'll bet you a hundred pounds that there is no way that you will read that chapter without bursting into a guffaw several times.

So what makes Bryson so funny? Well, first of all, he writes with a very dry sense of humour – a very British sense of humour in fact. This is not at all surprising since Bryson actually lived in England for twenty years (he has recently moved back to America). His style of writing is curiously over the top and nicely understated at the same time. It is difficult to believe that half of the events in this book actually happened to him as he describes them, but it is always written with clever subtlety.

Secondly, he writes about situations with which many of us can empathise. Even those of us who are not particularly well-travelled (such as me!) can find unnervingly familiar the scrapes into which Bryson gets himself. At some time, I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves at a loss having to deal with unhelpful receptionists/public transport workers, or to decipher perplexing bills in restaurants and hotels.

Some may query the absence of countries/cities that Bryson does NOT visit on this trip. (For instance, Bryson does Norway, Sweden but not Finland). The most obvious question many would ask is ‘how can you do a tour of Europe and not include Spain’? Indeed Spain may seem like a surprise omission, but let’s face it, I think most of us know a good deal about the country already – it is a very popul
ar holiday destination for us Brits. It is much more interesting to read about countries of which we know relatively little, particularly Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Liechtenstein – yes, even little Liechtenstein has a chapter all to itself!

My only complaint along such lines is that he seems to give a lot of emphasis to Italy, making the book seem a little unbalanced. Italy has no less than four chapters devoted to it (1 – Rome, 2 – Naples, Sorrento and Capri, 3 – Florence, 4 – Milan and Como) whereas most only have one. Bryson clearly loves the country (especially so after suffering the poor weather in Scandinavia) and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that with the rest of the book moving at such fast a pace, the four Italian chapters do tend to drag a tiny bit in comparison and you become a little impatient for him to once more move on to a different culture and a different language. This is only a minor criticism though.

It is widely available in paperback at the standard price of £7.99, although I feel that is a depressingly expensive amount to pay for a paperback book.

RECOMMENDED?

Those who have read all Bryson's books are no doubt in a better position to judge than me. However, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading any of his work, then in my opinion, ‘Neither here nor there' is the best choice with which to start. Fast-moving, riddled with amusing anecdotes and containing lots of interesting trivia about our beloved European cousins, not only will it entertain you, it will make you want to grab hold of that passport and rucksack straightaway!

Summary: