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Travels with my aunt
376 pages
A delightfully subversive romp that drags a stuffy retiree out of his garden and into a world of joyful, unapologetic chaos.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like being unexpectedly kidnapped by your most eccentric relative and dragged on a first-class train ride across Europe. It is a departure from the author's usually bleak moral landscapes, offering instead a sun-drenched, delightfully amoral picaresque. The prose remains as sharp and elegant as ever, but here it is deployed in the service of wry comedy and liberating chaos. You sit inside a mood of escalating absurdity, watching a rigid, dahlia-obsessed bank manager slowly thaw into a willing participant in smuggling and international mischief. It is a brisk, joyful read that celebrates the rejection of respectability in favor of living fully, perfect for anyone who loves witty character studies and the thrill of a late-in-life awakening.
- Mood
- liberating
- eccentric
- sun-drenched
- chaotic
- Tone
- wry
- irreverent
- satirical
- affectionate
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- late-in-life awakening · the absurdity of respectability · embracing chaos · unconventional family bonds · joyful amorality
- The writing
- Elegant and light-footed, marked by sharp, witty observations and a playful, comic energy.
- The arc
- Moves from rigid, bewildered stagnation to a joyful, liberated embrace of life's unpredictable chaos.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love witty, character-driven picaresques and stories of stuffy people being dragged out of their comfort zones.
Content notes
- outdated language and racial stereotypes
- criminality and smuggling
- aging and mortality
About the book
Greeneland has been described often as a land bleak and severe. A whisky priest dies in one village, a self-hunted man lives with lepers in another. But Greeneland has its summer regions, and in the sunlight everything looks a bit different. Here Aunt Augusta travels with her black lover, Wordsworth, Curran, the founder of a doggie's church, the CIA, man obsessed by statistics and his hippie daughter; and old Mr. Visconti, who has been wanted by Interpol for twenty years. Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, unexpectedly caught up with them, describes their activities at first with shock and bewilderment and finally with the tenderness of a fellow traveler going their way.
Description from Open Library.
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