Various Persons in Boats and/or Norway, To Say Nothing of Dogs -- Some Book Reviews
I recently finished reading the fourth of four related books, and now I will review them!
Unaccompanied Females in Norway; or, the Pleasantest Way of Traveling There, Passing Through Denmark and Sweden - I had first come across people making fun of the title on Twitter, being as the first part of the title, of which was the only part therein given, could be read as a kind of creepy guide to the unaccompanied females of Norway, but of course it's not that; and being a fan of travelogues, history, and Norway, I had decided to order it on Amazon forthwith. It's written be a young woman traveling with her mother in Norway in 1857. While it's not Paul Theroux or Patrick Leigh Fermor, it is written with enough attention to detail and context to make for an interesting read. The anonymous author is evidently a bit upper-class, one gathers from her comparisons to more luxurious lodgings and to other travels she's done, but is charmingly game to be lodged in haylofts in remote farmsteads. It portrays a country of bucolic rural life, in which habitations are often quite far apart, the local farmers seem very friendly, and there seems to be a surprising amount of tourist traffic (not like traffic jams but that they encounter other people just touring about as they are). I'm not sure I'd quite recommend the book if you're looking for your next thriller but if you fancy a window into a bygone rural idyll its a pleasant read. Ii give it a solid B
Three in Norway (By Two of Them) - Three young men, also from England travel to Norway in or before 1882 (which is to say it's published on that date. I suppose the same can be said about the date of the unaccompanied females), to spend the summer fishing and hunting reindeer. Like the unaccompanied females, class distinctions aren't examined but by having such copious free time and money to easily employ a handful of locals as servants / trackers / porters all summer we can deduce they aren't out-of-work-newsboys. Though, like the women, only moreso, they're perfectly happy to spend their time essentially camping in shelters they've constructed. I'm not familiar enough with Norwegian geography to have immediately recognized the location of placenames, and I'm not sure any other than the larger towns cropped up in both books but I got the impression they were in about the same area, and/or it sounded essentially similar. One feature that crops up prominently in both books are the mountain "saeters" which appear to be communal shelters built up in the mountains used by locals who are up there seasonably with their herds and traveling huntsmen / tourists. It seems they're free for use by all comers and it sounds like quite the social experience, a bit like staying in a hostel.
What I like most about this book though is that it is a rare example of a book written in first person plural. And it genuinely feels like the two of them wrote it together, seemlessly giving both's perspectives on events where they might diverge, and most amusingly of all, casually making fun of both of them. One gets the impression they had an agreement not to delete, or were just too comfortable and easygoing to care to do so, any teasingly satirical portrayal of themselves by the other. Where the one female writer of the prior book seemed good natured but rarely dabbled in actual humor, this book has some passages that really make you smile and laugh as you can feel the jests the boys are making of eachother. Aside from the barbs they aim at eachother, the authors employ satire and the humorous turn of phrase very effectively throughout. Their primary interest is in fishing and hunting, which aren't actually interests of mine, through roughing it in the Norwegian wilderness is.
I'm not so into reading ebooks and/or books on my computer but it appears this book is available as such; The same two authors seem to have written another book A Ramble in British Columbia (and apparently mountains in British Columbia have been named after both of them, see note at previous link); and one of the two authors has written an additional book about Norway: Peaks and Pines: Another Norway Book.
As with the above, if the subject matter is within the wheelhouse of what you're into it's a good read. I'd give this one an A, and if I happened to come across either of their other books in physical form I'd happily acquire and read them.
Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the dog) - this is seemingly the most famous/successful of these books, and I had read somewhere was directly inspired by the above. In this one three young Englishmen take a boat up the Thames in 1888. It's a lighthearted adventure, in which most of their most adventurous experiences are the result of them being rather more along the line of idle gentlemen than outdoorsmen and not particularly competent at boat handling or things such as not getting into fights with swans. Significant portions of many chapters are actually very extended tangental asides by the author, more along the lines of humorous essays sparked by some thought. It rather reminded me of the style of a stand up comedian, and I rather think the author missed his true vocation -- there's some biographical details at the end and I see he did try his hand at the stage for awhile, it's just bad luck stand up comedy probably hadn't been invented yet. Personally, personally, I found his attempts at humor often struck me as overwrought and trying-too-hard. It was interesting to read also in the note at the back (spoiler alert) that the trip is apparently fictional, though based on a boat trip he went on with his wife. Though I'd imagine a lot of the actual incidents mentioned either did happen on that trip or he'd heard about happening to friends. Among the particularly remarkable windows into life-at-the-time, fairly casually the protagonists find a dead woman floating down the river. I mean they do seem to be a bit struck by the occurrence but its not like today where that would be a trip-stopping occurrence. In their case they find that other people have already notified the authorities so they continue on their way.
I give it a B- (just less than the unaccompanied females on account of that trying-too-hard feel of its jokes -- though according to Wikipedia "the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty" so maybe you'll enjoy it more).
To Say Nothing of the Dog - is.. was.. well I was expecting it to be more of an homage to its namesake, but it really has very little to do with it. Fauxklore put me on to it after I'd mentioned the above book in a previous entry. A future time traveler (in 2057) travels back in time to 1888 and travels by boat down the Thames, passing the protagonists of the above book at one point. The protagonist of this book has read the above book and overtly references it a number of times, but their river journey is a relatively small portion of the book. The rest of the book was entertaining enough, but I guess I never recovered from a failure of management of expectations, as I'd expected more of an homage. Actually what it's more an homage to is classic murder mysteries a la Agatha Christie or Poirot, both of whom are explicitly mentioned. Not that there's a murder, rather the driving plot element is a search for a missing McGuffin, the mysterious and famously banal "bishop's birdstump"
Other notes about this book included that, having been written in 1997, it references a fictional "great plague" that occurred in 2018, which feels like it had been quite prophetic. And also I was a bit annoyed with the execution of the romance of the protagonists, which (spoiler alert), a potentially mutual interest was kind of hinted at earlier on but then in the last chapter or two it just suddenly went from unresolved romantic tension between coworkers to of-course-we're-getting-married. As a bit of a hopeless romantic I don't terribly mind a well executed love story... this was not that.
It also seemed to me to be science fiction with a prominently deist bend. The time-stream itself has intent, corrects itself with seemingly conscious cleverness and everyone is clearly fated to do whatever it is they are fated to do. That doesn't quite fit with the infinite anarchy of my cosmology.
I give it maybe a C+ or B-- if I can. It wasn't bad, it was well enough written (it "won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998."), cleverly woven together even, just if I'm going to read science fiction I prefer it not to be deist, and if I'm going to read an homage I prefer it to have more parallels to the original. If one's into mystery novels and approaches the book as an amusing specimen of that genre one probably wouldn't be disappointed.