In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
|
Book Summary Author: Bill Bryson Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2001-05-15 ISBN: 0767903862 Number of pages: 352 Publisher: Broadway Product features:
|
| New | New Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $4.75 | ||
| Used | Used Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $0.01 | ||
| Collectible | Collectible Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $14.50 |
Your purchase is protected by the A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee. Amazon.com automatically transfers your payment to the merchant so you'll never need to pay a merchant directly. Amazon.com A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee covers both the delivery of your item and its condition upon receipt.
Book Reviews of the In a Sunburned Country
Customer Review: Traveling red-faced
Summary: 1 Stars
Bill Bryson explains in the first two paragraphs that the title of his latest work - "In a Sunburned Country" - should have been "In a Sunburnt Country," a line of familiar and well-loved poetry borrowed from Australia's own Dorothea Mackellar. It should have been, but isn't. "I know it should," he writes, "but it isn't." And there you have it.Released to coincide with the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the book was intended as travel literature. Again, it isn't. It is, more than anything else, a vague and vaguely dispiriting record of Mr. Bryson's hop-scotch across the southernmost continent, which, he notes at every turn in the road, is very big, very hot and very far away.
There IS much to learn - to be fair - about Australian pubs, and Bryson's energetic eating and drinking habits. Tourist sites are well documented, degrees of tackiness carefully noted. Museums of every size and purpose proliferate like Australian rabbits. Motels emerge as major metaphors.
Not nearly as common are Australians - real people with real names and stories to tell. That is particularly true (and egregious) if they are black. Aboriginal Australians are most commonly described as being out of sight. A result, perhaps, of being out of Mr. Bryson's mind.
Mr. Bryson has taken earlier shortcuts with readers. He continues to contend, even in the flyleaf of "Sunburned Country", that he walked "most of" the Appalachian trail, an adventure he captured in "A Walk in the Woods". The truth is that, by his own reckoning, he walked 870 miles. The trail stretches out over 2200 miles. That works out to a little less than 40 percent. Which is, of course, no small accomplishment. But most of it? No. It isn't.
There are also the matters of tortured syntax (alternating American and British idiom), an unfortunate affinity for the vulgar anecdote and Mr. Bryson's general unpleasantness in the company of hotel and pub employees. None of that adds much.
Altogether an unfortunate outing for Mr. Bryson.