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84 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lost Youth?, August 22, 2006
This review is from: A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
This book is an extreme rarity. It is one that I cannot imagine ANYONE NOT enjoying. Strapping young precocious Fermor, bounced out of school and knocking about London with some chums awaiting, in Fermor's case, with many misgivings, the military rigours of Sandyhurst, decides to chuck it all and go gadding about Europe during the interwar years toward Constantinople at the age of eighteen (He turns nineteen about halfway through.). The result, culled from memories and diaries that survived, and penned decades later, is a bouncing picaresque jaunt through the heartland of Europe, all seen (save for the occasional aside) through the coruscating eyes of youth, is one I simply can't imagine anyone wanting to miss, especially given that this is a world now lost to us almost completely. Interlarded herein are disquisitions on literature, architecture, and history, history, history (a witches' brew of real and apocryphal). Add to this delightfully unguided rather than misguided quest a cast of characters ranging from the homeless seeking shelter to the aristocrat in his schloss whom the author chances upon the way and you have a simply irresistible and sui-generis narrative. You have this book which, regardless of how many grey hairs age has snowed upon your head, will make you feel young and in love with the world again.----5 lofty, swirling stars.
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50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare sort of read, June 26, 2001
You are certainly off the beaten path if you are reading this review. But trust me, you're in a good spot. It was an unintended and yet happy serendipity that I bought Fermor's "A Time of Gifts" at a used book shop at the far end of Crete, in Paleohora. It wasn't until later that I appreciated the coincidence. I thought my prep school education and university BA in ancient history and German grounded me pretty well in things European. After reading Fermor, I realize I "don't know jack". This is a great book. The writing is fine, the content superb. It is wonderful for all the adventures and carefree wanderings. Yet this story is poignant: not only for the glimpses of what is to come in WWII, but also because Fermor passes through a world that is gone forever. His journey would be impossible today. Read it and keep it. Happily, I came across the second book, "Between the Woods and the Water" in another used bookstore, the Green Apple in San Francisco.
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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A TIME OF GIFTS . . ., January 30, 2006
This review is from: A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
A TIME OF GIFTS is Fermor's lively autobiographical account of his walking tour of 1930s Europe as a charming, precocious and astonishingly brilliant teenage dropout. It encompasses not only the rake's progress, but acute observations of persons and places of that now vanished time, and remarkably erudite discourses on art, architecture, literature, history, anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, geography, and theories of cultural influence, as well. A TIME OF GIFTS is as enthralling as it is difficult. If the reader is willing to cross-check Fermor's frequent unexplained references and allusions; to consult a good dictionary with disheartening regularity; to become accustomed to Fermor's complex English prose style that, at times, is akin to learning a new language; and to not become frustrated with his dizzying flights of descriptive fancy that leave the reader grasping at his coattails, one will thoroughly enjoy this book. In other words, A TIME OF GIFTS is not for lightweights: it is great art; and great art demands one's full attention. And if one gives it one's full attention, one will emerge on the other side giddy with accomplishment . . . that same elated feeling one might recall from college having completed challenging courses taught by demanding but rewarding professors, done well, and expanded one's intellectual horizons beyond imagining.
While A TIME OF GIFTS is about many things, a central theme remains constant: the kindness of strangers. That and that we are children inhabiting an earthly paradise called life who stand to reap the richest gifts from the most unlikely sources by merely playing nicely with others.
Fermor's account (first published in the U.K. in 1977 and published in the U.S. this past year) continues in a second volume entitled BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER (first published in the U.K. in 1986 and published in the U.S. this past year). A third and concluding volume, not yet published, is widely expected, although Fermor is now in his nineties.
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