Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir Book

Bill Bryson’s hilarious memoir of growing up in middle America in the Fifties – complete, unabridged and read by the author.

Using his old fantasy life as a springboard, Bill Bryson recreates the life of his familyin the 1950s in all its transcendent normality. In a period that saw the inexorable rise of television, the opening of Disneyland, the testing of the atomic bomb and the explosion of choice in everything from food to cars, Bill Bryson’s days followed in reassuringly cosy succession, enlivened by modest triumphs and disasters.

Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, The Thunderbolt Kid is full of Bill Bryson’s inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, and this unabridged recording contains every single amusing anecdote and amazing fact. Nothing is left out, so you can enjoy the whole book in its entirety, read by Bill Bryson himself.

The New York Times - Jay Jennings

As a humorist, Bryson falls somewhere between the one-liner genius of Dave Barry and the narrative brilliance of David Sedaris…at his best he spools out operatically funny vignettes of sustained absurdity that nevertheless remain grounded in universal experience. These accounts, like the description of the bumper-car ride at a run-down amusement park or the tale of a friend's father's descent from the high dive at a local lake, defy excerpting; when taken whole, they will leave many readers de-couched.

Occasionally in the course of his reminiscences, Bryson abandons punch lines and demonstrates a lyrical gift for the tactile and noisome nature of childhood…that elevates the work to the level of classics in the genre like Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie.