A review by griddleoctopus
The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton

4.0

Like Atlas Shrugged, this is a polemical piece intended to show the rightness of Chestertons's philosophy, through a parodic, dystopian view of his beloved country. Unlike Rand though, Chesterton makes his antagonist initially believable and clever and his protagonist preternaturally witty and wise - and suffuses the entire book with his delicacy of language and humour. For that reason, the sections that are great - his poetry and songs about England, the romps across Southern England, the short dystopian end section - are only undermined slightly by his stereotyping (which sometimes bounds into racism) and petty nationalism. These regrettable latter elements make the book more like a Tom Sharpe farce than any of his other, clever and dark, fiction.