Customer Reviews

Round Ireland In Low Gear (Picador Books)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Newby still is a wonderful travel writer. he's funny, stubborn, typically English. After you've red this book you can't wait to go to Ireland (only not in february)

Read a review that complained - among other criticisms - that Eric had `lifted' great chunks of his narrative about touring Ireland from guide books. Even that he "admitted and acknowledged it" in the book. Now, apart from Eric Newby using citations correctly when he does quote from other works, there is no such confession of plagiarism in the book's footnotes. In fact running several likely paragraphs through the teacher's plagiarism website my son often uses revealed only a reference to one touring guide book, and that one Eric had co-authored anyway! So the author's narrative is as original as ever, and is delightfully sprinkled with Wanda's usual put-downs and `back-to-earth' asides.

And Ireland and its climate of course, offered Wanda Newby plenty of opportunities for those biting wifely comments, especially while being toured on bicycles! In winter, with overloaded panniers and chancing to luck and B&Bs for a bed at night, and Pubs or remote country-stores for meals.

Eric was perhaps rather "asking for it" with this idea. The resulting chaotic and riotous trip makes for a humorous romp through the Dingles and bogs in the near-continuous `soft mists' of Ireland, supported by the usual Newby need to give the reader the information and history of what the author(s) discover, see, experience and visit. The book is thoroughly enjoyable and is as tempting a portrait of Ireland as Pete McCarthy's "McCarthy's Bar" and, yes, it is as informative as any Bord Failte official touring-guide.

On yer bike says Eric!

I slogged my way through half of this book before I gave up. (My usual threshold is 50 pages) Eric & Wanda Newby cycle through Ireland in winter and are suprised/perturbed by the weather (?!!).

Mr. Newby is stangely self-centered. The book is a catalog of their travails with little comment on anyone they meet. I assume that he thought this would be humorous and entertaining, but after awhile I wanted him to shut up about himself and go home or get on with describing Ireland. When he does touch on history the descriptive passages seem to be read wholesale out of various guidebooks, which Newby acknowledges and feel like an add on instead of woven into their narrative. There are a few wonderful pages of landscape description but only enough to rate two stars and far too few to justify 298 pages.

I would not recommend this book. Instead read any of the late Thomas Flanagan's three novels about Ireland, The year of the French, The Tenants of Time or The End of the Hunt. Even Ray Bradbury's Green Shadows, White Whale (about living in Ireland while writing the screenplay for John Huston's film of Moby Dick.)