A review by bookishwendy
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman
4.0
If you ever stop in the town of Jerome, AZ, you will likely wander into the wonderful and curious kaleidoscope shop called "The Nellie Bly." Supposedly it is the "worlds largest" of such venues, and even features a handpained sign of the once-famous "world girdler" wearing with her signature checked coat and gripsack. I had heard of Bly mainly from her expose of a New York Psychiatric hospital, which was published by the World newspaper in 1887, and had wondered about her connection to a quaint, if remote, part of the desert southwest. After reading this book, I'm 95% sure she at least passed through it on her trip around the world.
This book is an intriguing portrait of two very different--and yet, surprisingly similar--women who caught up in what I like to think of as the Victorian Age "Steampunk" Effect. With this sudden surge of new technology, suddenly barriers were being broken, humanity is pushing itself faster, further, closer, louder, and becoming more efficient. Social barriers began to crack along with the physical restraints on speed and distance. Women could be reporters? Travel around the world? With fewer than seventeen trunks? No, with ZERO trunks?! What science fiction!
Nellie Bly is still relatively well known today, but I had never heard of Elizabeth Bisland, Bly's rival "world girdler," and I'd be remiss in not mentioning her. She was also a writer, but instead of Nellie's dare-devil stunt-girl journalism, Bisland was an introvert, an idealist, and Poe-reading romantic. Both dealt with their respective celebrity in different ways, and both changed for life by their respective journeys, for good and ill. I can't help but admire both of them, even if I have the feeling they didn't care for one another (though it's not clear to me if they ever actually met).
Overall I found the book perhaps a tad long and somewhat repetitive in places, yet was also surprised by some of the unexpected action sequences, my personal favorite being the crazy engineer who careens his train--and Miss Bisland--down the back of the Wasatch Mountains for a record-breaking speed run, with the locomotive careening up on two wheels around the curves. As both a dual-memoir of some boundary-breaking ladies and as a send-up to the late 19th Century and the emergence of the modern world, I heartily recommend it.
This book is an intriguing portrait of two very different--and yet, surprisingly similar--women who caught up in what I like to think of as the Victorian Age "Steampunk" Effect. With this sudden surge of new technology, suddenly barriers were being broken, humanity is pushing itself faster, further, closer, louder, and becoming more efficient. Social barriers began to crack along with the physical restraints on speed and distance. Women could be reporters? Travel around the world? With fewer than seventeen trunks? No, with ZERO trunks?! What science fiction!
Nellie Bly is still relatively well known today, but I had never heard of Elizabeth Bisland, Bly's rival "world girdler," and I'd be remiss in not mentioning her. She was also a writer, but instead of Nellie's dare-devil stunt-girl journalism, Bisland was an introvert, an idealist, and Poe-reading romantic. Both dealt with their respective celebrity in different ways, and both changed for life by their respective journeys, for good and ill. I can't help but admire both of them, even if I have the feeling they didn't care for one another (though it's not clear to me if they ever actually met).
Overall I found the book perhaps a tad long and somewhat repetitive in places, yet was also surprised by some of the unexpected action sequences, my personal favorite being the crazy engineer who careens his train--and Miss Bisland--down the back of the Wasatch Mountains for a record-breaking speed run, with the locomotive careening up on two wheels around the curves. As both a dual-memoir of some boundary-breaking ladies and as a send-up to the late 19th Century and the emergence of the modern world, I heartily recommend it.