Through Siberia by Accident Book

Irish writer Dervla Murphy has made a career -- no, a life -- by going to out-of-the-way places, interacting with the locals, and writing brilliantly about the experience. Books like In Ethiopia with a Mule and Where the Indus is Young secured her reputation -- this time, however, she may have asked too much of that rep. The trouble is, her preferred mode of travel after reaching Siberia on the relatively new BAM (Baikal-Amur-Mainline) railway line was a heavyweight bicycle, which she couldn't ride after injuring a knee enroute.

Books about train rides can be fun; one thinks of The Great Railway Bazaar or The Big Red Train Ride. But this one, though at time enthralling, has too much improvisation once the bicycle became unusable. I must concede that Murphy does a good job conveying in words what, at heart, is an abbreviated journey through the crumbling splendor of post-Soviet Siberia: how it differs from European Russia, the experience of traveling inland waters by paddle-wheel steamer and hydrofoil, how the quality of formal education has suffered. Sadly, there are no photos -- none! -- just a couple of maps. This is a signal omission in a book where the self-described "babushka" is helped, repeatedly, by ordinary Siberians and makes lots of new friends. If this book had contained a few photographs I could have rated it four stars, not three, for the quality of Murphy's prose alone.

from the book:
[at a local dog show]: The Rottweilers, Alsatians and Mastiffs . . . were muzzled until entering the ring. Those breeds longed to get at the tinies, some actually licking their lips as they strained on their chains . . . But the Great Danes, Afghans and Borzois -- were enchanted by the other extreme, wagged their tails, wanted to make friends. Most of the tinies were secure personalities and wagged in response but one Chihuahua peed in terror when a Great Dane, its head twice the size of the Chihuahua, bent down to convey an amiable interest in that strange ball of fluff. (p. 206)

Even allowing for [the highway's] seventy years of existence, the durability as litter, of tires, seemed unaccountably bizarre, not to say profligate . . . In sensibly frugal societies, worn tires serve as raw material for footwear, floor coverings, draft excluders, children's toys and roof anchors. (p. 218)