Narrow Dog to Carcassonne

Ideal holiday reading, this is the slightly oddly (but lyrically) written account of a retired English couple taking their narrowboat and whippet from the Midlands to Carcassonne, via the Channel and all sorts of other rather alarming adventures. The style might be odd but the subject matter is engaging, especially if you know boats a little, and read-out-loud funny in many places. Pleasingly, there is a flamingo-viewing scene in Palavas-les-Flots, somewhere we have visited ourselves.

Darlington has a great way with humour - giggle out loud stuff at times and you want to go back and read the jokes. The journey is also extremely interesting especially if you have been narrow boating yourself. Great encouragement for retirees to try something adventurous.

This was recommended by Amazon based upon my enjoying Emily Kimbrough's Floating Island. They both deal with trips aboard inland canal boats, but that's about it for similarity. Kimbrough's book was warm and funny. This one was simply tedious.

There were moments of humor but Darlington simply tries too hard. Every sentence tries to show you how witty he is, often in a sniggering teen-age way. He's not as funny as he thinks he is and his constant attempts to impress the reader with how broadly he can quote books, movies and songs pall. Couple this with unrelenting British slang and unexplained canal-boating terms, strong aversion to punctuation, a healthy set of prejudices, plus an extreme case of ADD when it comes to following a train of show more thought, and you've got a choppy, awkward book.

After a while I simply couldn't listen to him describe how everyone in England or France is a vandal, drug addict or worse, his wife telling him she shouldn't have married him, or any of them saying "we're gonna die" one more time and just started heavy skimming past all the "this guy's a dick" and "my dog is farting again".

I usually pay some attention to comments in Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. In this case, I only read the former (and didn't give enough weight to some comments)—my bad. Kirkus would have had me think twice with lines like, "Unfortunately, those moments of luminosity are rare in a text more notable for overblown vacation babble, long-winded stories, grand overstatement and pompous bombast - plus some daunting British slang impenetrable to all but the most seasoned Anglophile."

Imo, read Kimbrough's book; give this one a pass. show less

I came to this book as someone who has enjoyed many canal holidays, taking in quite a few of the places visited in the book. It is quite a straightforward story, clearly told and has some interesting, and even hair-raising, events in it. Although I enjoyed reading it, it didn't engage me as much as I had expected.

Terry Darlington - as an author you will either like or loath his writing style. Yet for me, there is a charm to the way the book has been crafted together, Funny, very much so, but people who don't like his style somehow seem to miss the wry humour and pith. Daring or foolish in concept I have yet to make up my mind. But given the chance I would have been happy to stand at the tiller to cross the channel. Its not bedtime reading - because chuckles always bring a elbow nudge in the ribs from the wife if I disturb her sleep. This is a 50 nudge book.

Just picked this up in the "quick read" section at the library, but I loved everything about it - the interesting narrator and his wife and dog, the journey and the descriptions of canal life in England, Belgium and France.

A retired couple and their 'narrow' dog, Jim, take their narrow boat from Stone to Carcassonne, via the Thames, the Channel and the Rhone. Darlington is a bit of a frustrated poet and his writing is lyrical, capturing special and scary moments in unusual ways.

Despite developing a kind of mild dislike for the author who, I seem to think, used to be in advertising or PR or something similar, this was an interesting story. One of the critics in the reviews for other books hit the nail on the head, however, by stating that all travel books these days needed a conceit of some sort. Taking a houseboat down through the canals in France – I mean why should we be interested? It’s your dream, mate, so entertain me if you can.
Well, I suppose he did in the end. It was a good trip, but I left it feeling that Darlington is a pub bore, that nobody knows better than him and that he itches and burns with a desire to let you know just how bloody smart he is. I felt this all through the book, but show more couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and then discovered on finishing the tale that he’d penned a little postscript pointing to all the literary allusions and quotations he’d peppered the book with. In case you were too dumb to see them. Being not quite as intelligent as he is. show less