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A review by frakalot
Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
4.0
Nellie Bly is exactly the kind of mighty woman that we all love. When she proposes her idea to her publishers she is hastily met with the rebuke that, if the trip were at all possible it would require a man to undertake it. To paraphrase her reply, she said:
"Very well, you send a man today and I shall depart tomorrow for another newspaper and I shall still beat your man back."
Apparently this can-do attitude was enough to eventually convince her superiors that she was up to the task and soon afterwards she was off and away on her ground breaking trip.
The story of her trip is told with delightful humour. An early example is when Bly discusses how much sweeter sleep is when it threatens to make you miss an engagement.
Just like Phileas, Nellie suffers delays and risks taking several detours yet still manages to eventually beat her ETA. On her journey she takes the opportunity to meet Mr. Verne himself and although on her departure he makes it clear that he doesn't believe she will be able to complete the trip in her estimated 75 days, she nonetheless considered him a fabulous host. This particular stopover is quite enjoyable to read, Verne shows Bly the map on which he'd drawn Phileas' trip and compares the places where Bly's trip will deviate.
The story features plenty of racial stereotyping and derogatory language which a modern reader will need to expect, much like Verne's story but this story also spent much more time on the quirks of the individuals that Bly met, giving this true story much better secondary characters throughout.
Much to my surprise quite a lot of this narrative struck me as probably progressive for the time. Bly is quite proud of how much freer and more progressive her America was when compared with other European nations of the time. Still, there was a wide range of things that women had no say over back then, much of which seemed pretty weird to me, (eg. At one location women are not allowed out of their cabins before 8am, during which time the men can roam freely in their pyjamas).
I couldn't parse many of the references used, which were presumably familiar to American readers in the late 19th century. It wasn’t just unfamiliar names either, for example I have no idea what Bly means when she says, "they were making love through the nose."
There is much in Bly's story that parallels the journey that Phileas took, although there's also much to distinguish this as an excellent follow up to the 80 day journey. I'm not usually taken with biographical texts and certainly not a fan of travel journals, but as a sort of continuation of Verne's story this was perfect. It was just as much fun to read and it is easy to read it as another fantastic work of fiction, even more amazing that it's non-fiction. Who knows how much embellishment was added but either way '72 Days' has established Bly as an excellent writer in my mind and I was a little disappointed to not find any actual fiction written by her.
The narration by Mary Reagan is very, very good. She captures the joyful mood of the tale really well and pulls off many accents superbly. The recording has some rather funny quirks about it including at one point very faint sirens in the background and at another point it seems that something like a pet getting in the way occurs because it sounds like Mary recoils from the microphone while reading and even so she never missed a single beat in her narration. All part of the fun with these volunteer recordings and I had to smile. Check it out on Librivox, it's well worth the listen.
I was a little tired of this by the end, but that's mostly because this isn't a typical read for me. The story continued with the same energy right through to the end. Bly does have another publicity stunt book called 'Ten Days in a Madhouse' which I wouldn't mind checking out some time, but not for a while, I'm having withdrawals and it's time for me to get back into some scifi.
"Very well, you send a man today and I shall depart tomorrow for another newspaper and I shall still beat your man back."
Apparently this can-do attitude was enough to eventually convince her superiors that she was up to the task and soon afterwards she was off and away on her ground breaking trip.
The story of her trip is told with delightful humour. An early example is when Bly discusses how much sweeter sleep is when it threatens to make you miss an engagement.
Just like Phileas, Nellie suffers delays and risks taking several detours yet still manages to eventually beat her ETA. On her journey she takes the opportunity to meet Mr. Verne himself and although on her departure he makes it clear that he doesn't believe she will be able to complete the trip in her estimated 75 days, she nonetheless considered him a fabulous host. This particular stopover is quite enjoyable to read, Verne shows Bly the map on which he'd drawn Phileas' trip and compares the places where Bly's trip will deviate.
The story features plenty of racial stereotyping and derogatory language which a modern reader will need to expect, much like Verne's story but this story also spent much more time on the quirks of the individuals that Bly met, giving this true story much better secondary characters throughout.
Much to my surprise quite a lot of this narrative struck me as probably progressive for the time. Bly is quite proud of how much freer and more progressive her America was when compared with other European nations of the time. Still, there was a wide range of things that women had no say over back then, much of which seemed pretty weird to me, (eg. At one location women are not allowed out of their cabins before 8am, during which time the men can roam freely in their pyjamas).
I couldn't parse many of the references used, which were presumably familiar to American readers in the late 19th century. It wasn’t just unfamiliar names either, for example I have no idea what Bly means when she says, "they were making love through the nose."
There is much in Bly's story that parallels the journey that Phileas took, although there's also much to distinguish this as an excellent follow up to the 80 day journey. I'm not usually taken with biographical texts and certainly not a fan of travel journals, but as a sort of continuation of Verne's story this was perfect. It was just as much fun to read and it is easy to read it as another fantastic work of fiction, even more amazing that it's non-fiction. Who knows how much embellishment was added but either way '72 Days' has established Bly as an excellent writer in my mind and I was a little disappointed to not find any actual fiction written by her.
The narration by Mary Reagan is very, very good. She captures the joyful mood of the tale really well and pulls off many accents superbly. The recording has some rather funny quirks about it including at one point very faint sirens in the background and at another point it seems that something like a pet getting in the way occurs because it sounds like Mary recoils from the microphone while reading and even so she never missed a single beat in her narration. All part of the fun with these volunteer recordings and I had to smile. Check it out on Librivox, it's well worth the listen.
I was a little tired of this by the end, but that's mostly because this isn't a typical read for me. The story continued with the same energy right through to the end. Bly does have another publicity stunt book called 'Ten Days in a Madhouse' which I wouldn't mind checking out some time, but not for a while, I'm having withdrawals and it's time for me to get back into some scifi.