Title: Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother CountryAuthor: Joe Queenan
First Published: 2004
No. of Pages: 240
Synopsis (from B&N): "One semitropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan's English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken vindaloo in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression, coupled with dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain.
Freed from the obligation to visit his wife's relations, as he had done for the first twenty-six years of their marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the limey heart of darkness. The result is a very funny, picaresque adventure that will appeal to anglophile and anglophobe alike."
Fiction or Nonfiction: Nonfiction
Comments and Critique: I wish I could say that this book lived up to my expectations, but unfortunately I can't. To be frank, I had to force myself to finish it. One of my complaints is that it's supposed to be a travel book but there was very little travel in it. Sure, the author went to England and each chapter is purportedly about a different city or region, but almost without exception each chapter devolved into a critique about people or things that were only loosely connected with the place. Which leads to my bigger complaint -- the tone of the book was pure negativity. It's obvious that the author was intending to be funny, but I found it simply irritating. It would seem that there has been no person or group in the last 40 years that he has anything positive to say about, with the exception of the Beatles. No one else has any talent, charm, or intelligence. A little bit of this I could handle; after all, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. But an entire bookful is too much. Examples:
Page 41: "I had been aware of London's stature as a theatrical mecca for philistines ...."
Page 43: "It is just barely possible to imagine a time when Agatha Christie's whodunit [Mousetrap] ... was not rickety, dull, and corny."
Page 45, on attending a musical tribute to Queen: "Not since I attended a Kenny G concert ... had such an enticingly revolting specter of imbecility haunted my reveries."
Further on page 45: "The early 1990's had been a Periclean age of bad taste on both sides of the Atlantic, with Cats, Phantom [of the Opera], Sunset Boulevard, [Les Miserables], and Miss Saigon all playing simultaneously...; moreover, back then Billy Joel, Phil Collins, and the Grateful dead were still going strong."
And that's just from one chapter.
I want to say something good about every book I read, and I will say that the historical tidbits the author throws in were interesting. For instance, there were quite a few items about various kings and queens that I didn't know. But this is the only positive comment I can come up with. I even thought it might be me, that my reaction was the result of a bad day or something, so I intentionally put the book down and tried again (and again) to come back to it with a fresh eye and attitude. It did not help. The sarcasm level and amount of negativity masquerading as humor was just too high for me enjoy this book.
Would You Recommend This Book to Others: No. In my opinion, the bad far outweighed the good.
Challenges: 999 (Dewey Decimal); A to Z (author "Q"); Dewey Decimal (900 Geography and History); What's in a Name 2 ("relative")
1 comments:
It's too bad this one turned out to be a dud for you. At least you were able to get something good out of the historical aspects of it, even if that was a stretch. :-)
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