It has taken me a couple of months to finally finish Three Men in a Boat, when I could have read it in a couple of days! The reason was it was too easy to put it down and forget about it. There is no plot to speak of so there is no driving force to the narrative. The writing is discursive, digressive and episodic. The characterisation is weak and the digressions, while sometimes witty, are more often boring, dull and self-indulgent.

The style is witty, but eventually I found it palled due to the lack of plot. The dull bits far outweighed the witty bits and I found it dragged and I was wishing for the end.

My Recommendation:

Cons: Digressive, dull in places, and entirely episodic.

Pros: Witty style. ( )

[Folio Society edition; Paul Cox illustrator]
This fairly short work is strange mix of travel journal, storytelling, and social commentary. Jerome uses the setting of a group of friends embarking on a boating holiday up the Thames as a framework on which to hang a series of humorous stories and anecdotes (many unrelated to the main story), social commentary (mostly sarcasm in the guise of cluelessness), and observations on the various spots of interest along the Thames from Kingston to Oxford.

J. (as our narrator calls himself) is only slightly better than Sterne’s Tristram Shandy in staying on topic, but he always manages to get his crew a bit closer to their destination by the end of each fairly brief chapter. Jerome’s tongue-in-cheek narrative, mixed with full-out slapstick and the occasional genuine admiration of the beauty of the river environs makes for a fun read. How much it reveals about the life of the privileged in 1880s England, I can’t say, though Paul Cox’s illustrations in the Folio Society edition are wonderfully suited to the narrative, and certainly help the reader envision the Thames, its travelers and its denizens of over 100 years ago.

If you enjoy a humorous bit of wandering through Victorian England, and aren’t much worried about plot, I highly recommend Three Men in a Boat is an engrossing diversion from the ordinary.

Os. ( )

http://spwebdesign.livejournal.com/60... ( )

I was sceptical that I would enjoy a book written in 1889 but a lot of the stuff these guys go through could be part of a modern comedy movie.... Will Farrell as J...... ( )

This book, first published in 1889, has a timeless humor, mostly because the characters’ foibles, the source of most of the laughs, are the same foibles we see in our friends and acquaintances—and ourselves—today. How often have you struggled to pack your bag for trip only to realize that you’ve left an important item out and simply cannot fit it in? And then there’s the matter of toothbrushes. Has it been packed? Where is it? Oops! It's been packed, but I need to use it.

Although Jerome uses one particular trip as the driving narrative of the book, he makes many side trips into memories of the past and other river journeys he and his friends have made. He tells of his friend Harris’s misguided confidence that he could guide some lost souls out of the Hampton Court maze. He tells of a friend who, while taking a punt up the river, managed to get himself stuck on the pole as the punt drifted away. Jerome found this quite hilarious—until he realized he was left on a punt without a pole! He also finds many opportunities to make amusing and idiosyncratic observations about life

One of my favorite running jokes in the book had to do with the distribution of work and of comforts among the three travelers. Each one of them seems to be brilliant at coming up with a logical reason that the other two should do most of the work, or why the one doing the talking should get some special privilege. They all seem good-natured about it, but it seems to be an ongoing battle.

This was a great, fun read. It’s nice and light and diverting. There were times when my interest flagged; some of the narrative digressions went on a little too long, and a few points in the journey were a little boring and sometimes hard to follow because I’m not a boating person myself, but overall I had a great time reading this book.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )