Three Men in a Boat (thoughts)

I’d heard good things about Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat in a few places, but it was Rebecca’s review of an audio version that made me sit up and pay attention. After all, I was looking at a fifteen hour drive, and my ideal road trip audiobook is both funny and well-written (I feel like I could do a whole post on how to choose the perfect book for your cross-country drive, since I’ve done so many of them over the years!), and I’ve lately come to realise how much I love the classics in audio form. So I was delighted when my library had an e-copy available for download that (legally) allowed me to burn it to CD. Then it was just a matter of finding the patience to wait until October! ;)

As soon as I got on the interstate, I popped in the first disc and settled back. It turned out to be the perfect choice for a trip, since the narrator’s experiences mirrored (to some extent) my own. It was especially fun to hear the packing discussion while sitting in my own packed-to-the-gills car. ;) But really, Jerome is such a marvelous writer, I think this would be a perfect book for just about any time! I laughed until I had tears in my eyes almost right off the bat, when the narrator goes into a rambling tangent about health and hypochondria and his readings at the British Museum’s library. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t always get along that well with satire, but this was pitch perfect. Plus, amidst the overblown comedic episodes and ridiculous attitudes of the friends (and the dog! OMG, the story of him and the big cat also made me laugh until I cried!), there were passages of genuine thoughtfulness and loveliness. The book’s a patchwork, really, of minute descriptions and advice of the various stretches of the Thames, hilarious anecdotes, and moments of real, earnest reflection. I’m not going to lie; the first time a more flowery passage came along, I was a bit confused about whether to take it seriously. But while they don’t exactly ‘flow’ with the rest of the book, I came to enjoy them anyway, and they’re not nearly as odd as, say, the ones in Cold Comfort Farm. The following passage resonated especially well with me:

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

I found myself wishing I could get to know Jerome in real life, and I imagine he’d be great fun at a dinner party. While Three Men in a Boat is Victorian, it’s quite late Victorian and definitely reminded me of some of the fin-de-siecle literature I’ve read, particularly Maupassant’s story “Mouche.” It also had that same kind of romping, joie-de-vivre I associate with Colette, although without the naughtier bits. ;) And as Rebecca mentioned in her review, there are definitely shades of Wodehouse! Although, I must say I think this had more depth than the Jeeves and Wooster stories I’ve read.

At the end of the day, I was quite sad the reach the end of the book, and isn’t that the best praise a reader can give? In fact, the only thing that assuaged my sadness was my discovery that I could download Three Men in a Bummel! I promptly put myself on the waiting list and got my hands on it this morning, just in time for some painting entertainment (I’m almost through Galileo’s Daughter, which is a rare foray for me into audio nonfiction).

One final note: I had a different narrator than the one Rebecca listened to, and while I haven’t compared the two, I can give Ian Carmichael a wholehearted thumbs up. He had just the right tone and kept the narration at a steady volume throughout (one of my pet peeves in audiobooks, especially on a roadtrip, is when the narrator goes from whispering to shouting in order to better convey the dialogue, while I frantically twirl my volume knob up and down).