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He lay relaxed; as he remembered lying relaxed in his pram when he was little and watching the leaves of trees blowing, whispering and sunlit overhead. The repetition of these points doesn't build to any greater theme or purpose: it's as if Theroux just didn't re-read his manuscript and hadn't realized that he'd used the exact same phrasing against the exact same target five times before. I could relate intimately to the pivotal character - with his youthful perspective on the world and people around him. I started this as an audiobook but that just didn't work; I wanted to check maps to follow all the places author was visiting.
And check this out--after his fight with the sea itself, which he wins (gets himself and his dog safe into the tower), it says: “The very air he breathed was full of salty spray, so that he breathed a mixture of air and water, half boy, half fish. Set in classic Westall country-the north of England, shortly after WWII-this atmospheric novel tackles fairly sophisticated subject matter: a 17-year-old's affair with a woman nearly twice his age. I imagine Northern Ireland is quite different today, hence the book has some historical merit, especially being written at the time of the 'Falklands affair', Maggie at the wheel, Prince William a newborn.It’s a sustained joke with a huge amount of truth to it, and one of the most memorable and funniest passages of travel writing that I know. He experiences yobs on trains, fights between mods and skinheads, grotty seaside guesthouses and a rail strike.
He felt … he felt like a bird flying very high, far from the world and getting further away all the time. Then he undid the bundle and laid out the blankets on the right bunks and turned back to the shelter door, ready to take Dulcie from Mam.He doesn't try to lead the reader with absolutes, but plays the events and themes with ambiguities, particularly the ending - the supposed 'happy' ending unable to be just that after everything Harry's experienced. I wanted to like this book because I know my mum really loved it, but I just could not get into it at all. M wants to adopt him, so they go back to Newcastle to work things out--and discover that Harry’s family completely survived the bombing, but were tossed by the blast into the neighbor’s yard so the wardens thought they were a different family.
It was man's best machine traversing earth's best feature -- the train tracking in the narrow angle between vertical rock and horizontal water. He describes how the driver stops frequently to deliver items like milk and newspapers to isolated houses.Harry's adventure along the coast is fraught with challenge after challenge, and it seems that everyone he meets is two shades shy of normal. He smelt the tar of the boat and it was a nice smell; it was the first thing he’d smelt since the burning gas, and it was a comforting smell. At odds with the otherwise genial storytelling are scenes in which a sadistic homosexual corporal attempts to molest Harry. Theroux's journey was further reduced when he decided to explore Britain by a land journey round the coast.
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