[read for the Armchair Traveller Challenge]

I was surprised but delighted to find this on the dollar clearance rack at HPB a few years ago, as this title kept popping up as a good read on the BookCrossing forums. And, I believe it was the first book I pulled off the shelf as I was searching for enough titles to satisfy the Armchair Traveler Challenge. Overall, I enjoyed the book, so I hope the author’s made some money from it (my love for used books notwithstanding). Hawks writes good characters, beautiful setting description, and decent dialogue. When I’d finished, I wished for a little more connection between his thoughts on departure and arrival. This was also a fairly quick read, thank goodness, and not so heavy on the philosophy that I had to break for “ponder time.”

Quotes that made me think, or laugh, or roll my eyes:

“… ‘if onlys’ are inevitable. The trick is to be masters of our own destiny in so far as we have control, and take the rest on the chin with a wry smile. But we must go for it.”

“…I felt I was headed for the kind of big-time embarassment which leaves a scar on your soul and can disrupt sleep patterns.”

“Anyone who packs two days before departure should seek counselling. Balanced people are still shoving stuff into their bag as they are leaving the house. That’s normal.”

“Taxi-drivers are the same throughout the world—great levellers. Never mind that [someone famous] has jumped into the cab, they’ll get no specialist treatment, none whatsoever. The driver will bore them just as sh*tless as you and me.”

“Of all the romantic and heroic ways to leave this world, being part of a controlled explosion with a large kitchen appliance rated very poorly. Folk songs and poems were unlikely to be written, and not just because ‘fridge’ is a very difficult word to find a rhyme for.”

“This was Irish traditional music as I had hoped to see and hear it, spontaneous and from the heart, and not produced for the sake of the tourist industry. No question of being paid, or any requirement to perform for a certain amount of time. This was self-expression, not performance.”

Tom: “Where are you headed?”
Tony: “I don’t really know.”
Tom: “Well, isn’t that true of all of us?”
Tom delivered building supplies and pearls of wisdom.

“I began to wonder whether my ‘fridge journey’ could be considered an allegory for life. I decided that there was some persuasive evidence. Each day I was faced with a number of choices, some were easy and others were harder. I had learned not to worry; to make my choice and allow things to happen. When things…weren’t good…then they were character building. There weren’t any wrong or right paths to choose, just different ones, and where they led was governed by the attitude adopted towards them. What else? I couldn’t manage alone.”

“I had become unnerved by the eye thing. Some different form of communication had just gone on, and although the meaning seemed clear enough, history had shown that this was a language I was well capable of misinterpreting. Most girls [speak the language fluently]. Boys don’t speak it at all, but just understand a smattering of key words. Their job is not to make a pig’s ear of the translation. They normally fail quite spectacularly.”

Yes, it may get a bit repetitive towards the end, but rarely do I find a book that has me audibly laughing on the subway and wiping tears (from laughing too hard) away. This is totally my type of humor—dry, ironic, sarcastic. I totally recommend this for just a silly read and I wouldn’t feel too badly if you put it down half-way through. Its a book written for the jokes, not for the story line.

Hitch-hiking around Ireland with a fridge, for a bet; he gets support from a national radio station almost immediately, which seems to render the whole thing a bit pointless. The cheerful facetiousness (“I have thought of a joke; I MUST INCLUDE IT”) wasn’t as grating as it was when he was trekking through the poverty of Moldova, but the author still emerges as a fairly shallow and unlikeable sort of person. Oh well.