Prompt – A book with only words on the cover – no graphics or pictures (my copy doesn’t have graphics or pictures, unlike the above!)
Medium – Book
About the Book – A temporarily homeless Englishman decides to try and get from St Pancras to Euston on the train. To do so, he travels across continents and countries – to Russia, Mongolia and Eastern Europe, meeting all sorts of people on the way. Written 40 years ago, the author writes about his experiences travelling across communist countries, discussing the ways in which men, women and children perceived him being from the Capitalist West.
My Rating – 5/10. This book was picked for me by my husband when I didn’t have a book in my own collection to match the prompt. He is really good at picking books for me, and I have to say, I really enjoyed the first part of the book (the journey through Russia on the train). I’m a real fan of trains and train stories, so the descriptions of the traveller’s journey on the Trans-Siberian Express was fantastic – it’s a journey that I’ve always wanted to make, so I found it really interesting. By the second half of the book, I thought that the author had ‘lost his way’ slightly – he was now in Mongolia and seemed to not be able to find much of interest to discuss apart from the scenery.
This book is very much a book of its time. The traveller’s dealings with women are many and numerous – he must have some kind of magnetism because at some points in the book he seemed to be sleeping his way across Asia. Funnily enough, all the women he attracts seem to be young, attractive, and deeply in love with him. He is either God’s gift to women or a bit of a fantasist. He also comes off as a bit ‘British Empire-y’ – he’s quite high-and-mighty and seems to think that being British means that he can go to all of these places and walk around like he owns them.
Would I read it again? Probably not. I like travel writing (and trains) but found that I skimmed the last half of the book.
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