Review: Dear Bill Bryson - Ben Aitken ***

By Brian Clegg

This is what they call a high concept book – you don’t need many details to get the point, as what it sells is a clear, simple concept. In this case it’s retracing Bill Bryson’s journey from his 1995 book Notes from a Small Island, as much as possible staying and eating in the same places, seeing the same sights and having the same experiences. This book just jumped at me off the bookshelf – I love travel books that are humorous (the serious ones generally come across as far too worthy) and am a big fan of Bryson, even when he had the temerity to amble into popular science.

As a result, I was a little unnerved when I read in Ben Aitken’s introduction ‘I mention this (the book being an irreverent homage, rather than a pious and gushing one) to give the more zealous members of Bryson’s fan club a chance to back out now… Nor am I funny. If I ever seem funny, or write things that seem funny, it is almost always by accident.’ So, it’s arguable this introductory statement pretty much entirely counters my reason for buying the book in the first place (and probably quite a few buyers). Perhaps it should be mentioned on the back cover (interestingly, it is in the online equivalent of a blurb). Luckily, though, Aitken’s comments turn out to be more self-deprecatory than entirely factual.

There’s no doubt that there are dollops of humour in here, some of which work really well – though the style of book doesn’t sit awfully well with Aitken’s regular thoughts on social justice and inequality. It’s not that I disagree with him about the impact of inequality, particularly in the North and the South West – I’m all in favour of levelling up and such – it’s just that this content does not fit well with Bryson and would be more apposite if Aitken had decided to take the same approach to an Orwell or J. B. Priestley book. In fact both get several mentions, and probably the biggest thing I’ve got out of reading Aitken is putting Priestley’s English Journey on my ‘to read’ list.

Aitken’s writing comes alive when he recounts conversations, from the delightful to the downright scary, when encountering a character who quite clearly could resort to violence at any moment. And some of his descriptions of places are effective. But at times he follows Bryson in such a half-hearted way that it’s hard to get much out of the travel writing. So, for instance, he tells us that Bryson thinks that Blackpool’s illuminations were tacky and inadequate. But he doesn’t bother to actually look at them himself, relying on a one line comment from a local to give his response.

In the end – and Aitken effectively admits this – any attempt to be critical of Bryson’s travel writing is breaking a butterfly on the wheel. The original book was not about in-depth analysis, or even deep reaction to the surroundings. It’s as much about Bryson’s character and the feel he gets of the place as it is ‘real’ travel writing. That being the case, it was never going to be an easy job to try to follow Bryson and update us on how things have  changed, because Bryson was not offering biting social commentary or exquisite architectural observation. There is, in the end, very little in Notes from a Small Island that can sensibly be updated, unless it were done by Bryson himself – and frankly, his attempt in the 2015 The Road to Little Dribbling wasn’t up to the original. So, to some extent, this was a project that was likely to fail right from the start.

Despite this, at risk of damning with faint praise, I never felt like I wanted to give up on Aitken. There was always enough to interest me to keep me going. But it’s certainly not a book from which to get the same kind of enjoyment as the original.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.