Notes from a Big Country

US: Doubleday, 1998. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Bill Bryson has the rare knack of being out of his depth wherever he goes - even (perhaps especially) in the land of his birth. This became all too ap parent when, after nearly two decades in England, the world's best-loved tr avel writer upped sticks with Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al, and returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty - the Open Universi ty, Boxing Day, Branston pickle, and irony, to name a few. But any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the forgotten treas ures of his childhood: the glories of a New England autumn; the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts, and motel rooms where you can generally count on being awakened in the night by a piercing shriek and the sound of a female voice pleading, "Put the gun down, Vinnie, I'll do anything you s ay." When an old friend asked him to write a weekly dispatch from New Hampshire for the Mail on Sunday's Night & Day magazine, Bill firmly turned him down. So firm was he, in fact, that gathered here is eighteen months' worth of his popular columns about that strangest of phenomena - the American way of life. Whether discussing the dazzling efficiency of the garbage disposal unit, the exoticism of having your groceries bagged for you, the jaw-slackening direness of American TVV or the smug pleasure of being able to eat beef without having to wonder if when you rise from the table you will walk sideways into the wall, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on the world's richest and craziest country.