Three Men In A Boat (Large Print Edition) Book

This book is a strange mix. Part of it is of a particular kind of obvious humour. Sort of like watching a very pompous-looking person talking loudly into their cell-phone and paying no attention to where they are going and therefore fails to notice the banana skin everyone else has been avoiding. Bamm, down she goes, and hahaha, its just so funny, you have to laugh. There are also amusing incidents with the fox terrier Montmorency, whose chief pleasures in life seem to be fighting and hanging out with packs of street dogs. One gets the impression that JKJ wouldn't at all mind being reincarnated as an immoral, street-fighting, anarchic dog in the care of very liberal and approving owners.

The book is full of side-stories, none of them particularly interesting and some of them absolutely dire. Near the end was a highly-romanticised account of a woman with an illegitimate baby committing suicide by drowning. How the waters lovingly embraced her and gave her peace. That's what's wrong with this book. Highly amusing incidents intermixed with purple prose, a travelogue of some of England's most boring towns, and whatever struck the author as (I want to say interesting, but I don't believe it really) something that would fill in the narrative and be 'educational'. A good editor could cut this to a really wonderful funny book only about a third-long. In this case the abridged version would be a hell of a lot better than the original and I would have given it more than 3-stars.

So humour - 5 stars
Travelogue and lyrical pieces - 1 star
Montmorency - 3 stars

Av. 3 stars.