Hoofing It Around the Island

#35 - The Kingdom by the Sea, by Paul Theroux
Finished 6/30/07
Rating: 4/5
Total Pages: 361
Reason for Reading: Recommended by a friend
REVIEW: I enjoyed Theroux’s journey around the coastal perimeter of Great Britain, even though the prose became very repetitive and droning at times. He is particularly adept at characterizing the myriad of interesting people that he encountered as he walked, took the train, jumped on buses, or hitchhiked his way through a dazzling array of tiny hamlets, picturesque villages, and dreary towns. He seems to have a rather bleak view of most of the places he visited. I took this with a large grain of salt (sea salt, that is *wink*), as I prefer to come to my own conclusions on such things. If nothing else, this served as a wonderful geography lesson for my summertime explorations of places far and near. I kept Google Maps up the entire time I was reading, so that I could track his steps from place to place.

FAVOURITE QUOTES: “I kept walking. It was possible for me to look through the front windows of these bungalows and see people polishing a souvenir horse brass, or buffing a cruet, or crocheting a doll with a long dress as a container for hiding the toilet roll. And I saw a woman at the window of one bungalow carefully biting the tip of her tongue and ironing an antimacassar. No one at Lydd-on-Sea was staring out of the window at the hideous nuclear power station and whispering, ‘God help us,’ but rather the general activity had to do with tidying. I thought about this as I walked along, and it seemed hugely appropriate that people were ironing antimacassars in a spot where a nuclear melt-down could be occurring. This was England, after all.” [p. 52]

The following two quotes are from the section on Northern Ireland….a depressing and frightening account indeed. (Theroux’s journey took place in the early 1980’s):

“It was all old grievances, and vengeance in the dark. That was why the ambush was popular, and the car bomb, and the exploding soap box, and the letter bomb. The idea was to deny what you stood for and then wait until dark to get even with the bugger who made you deny it.” [p. 233]

“Ulster was a collection of secret societies, to which only men were admitted. The men dressed up, made rules, beat drums, swore oaths, invented handshakes and passwords, and crept into the dark and killed people. When they were done they returned home to their women, like small children to their mothers.” [p. 238]