A review by busybeezle
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

3.0

I enjoyed this book at the beginning. Bryson seemed to have a genuine affection for (some of) Britain (the bucolic bits, the historical bits) and for (some of) its people (the ones who barely interacted with him and on whom he could project his own ideas of what British people are like and what he liked about them). I was charmed by the early chapters, although since they took place in a part of England (Dorset) I visited as a child, I'm pretty sure personal nostalgia played a big role in my liking that part of the book. But as others have said, this gets repetitive fast, and Bryson quickly becomes an atrocious travel companion. 

He may very well be a lovely person in real life, but here he comes across as a smug, condescending, sexist, fatphobic bully with a serious anger management problem. He screams at a couple out walking their dogs. He screams at manager of a hotel he's staying at. He melts down when some poor teenager working at McDonald's asks him if he wants to add an apple turnover to his order. And he seems to think we should be cheering him on: 'Yeah, Bill! You sure told that McDonald's employee! How dare he follow his manager's instructions and try to upsell you? No, of course you shouldn't have said "no thanks" like any normal person. You needed to put him in his place!' 

At one point, he gleefully recounts hitting a ten-year-old child with his bag, just because the kid happened to be sitting across from him on a train and I guess Bryson couldn't cope with another human daring to exist in the same space for the length of a single train ride. It's no wonder his own wife and children didn't accompany him on this trip--he sounds like a terrible person to have to travel with. It's a shame, because I enjoyed one of his other books (America: One Summer, 1927) and had heard such great things about this that I went into it with high hopes. I left with such a strong dislike for the author, I don't know that I'll ever want to read anything by him again.

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