The Saturday Morning Post (No. 68)

 

This week we go back to the source. Last week I reviewed Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog.  Her story was a nod to Jerome K Jerome's most famous novel, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) That novel being available on Gutenberg, I downloaded it... And so once more we are on a small boat on the Thames. This time making our way up it from London.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)  by Jerome K Jerome  B

Though described as a novel, it is more of a fictional travelogue with a great many humorous anecdotes hung on the incidental narrative of a boating trip. The story, such as it is, describes a boating expedition up the Thames River in the late 1880's undertaken by three men, and a dog. The actual journey it is loosely based on the author's honeymoon, with his bride being replaced by George and Harris in the fictional journey. He wrote it right after they returned from their honeymoon. How much of the voyage outside of the actual river is authentic I don't know. What I do know is that many, many years ago I collected books on London, and I picked up a two volume set called The Thames Highway by Fred S Thacker, more or less under the impression that it would deal with the Thames of London to the sea. However it covered the entire length of the Thames - with maps. I never read it, as it was rather dry reading, mostly a list of this sites in great detail, but reading Three Men in a Boat allowed me to put it into use, tracing their progress on a series of maps of the river. You never know... Which is why you should never throw anything out.

Being a fan of clever, witty writing, I enjoyed this book and his dry humor, though, as I say, I can't really consider it a novel. Rather it was an excuse to tell a wide variety of humorous little stories on all sorts of subject. I believe humorous stories was the type of writing Jerome had been producing before writing this book. The book proved to be so popular that it has never been out of print, and though he wrote other books and plays, none were as popular as this one.

He did however, write a similar book some years later with the same characters called Three Men on the Bummel. This time they go on a bike trip through Germany. I downloaded that one as well, and will be reporting on it in a few weeks.

This is a famous book, and something of a classic. It's a nice light read, but nothing more that a collection of humorous stories and a glimpse into life in Victorian England.