When you’re packing for a trip halfway across the country, and you know you’ll be sitting in airports and on planes, you need good reading material. When your trip halfway across the country will deposit you into cold weather and a household full of family members and children filled with the holiday spirit, you need something more. You need the literary equivalent of “Calgon, take me away.”
And that’s where Bill Bryson comes in.
For the uninitiated (poor you!), Bryson is the author of a myriad of humorous travelogues, memoirs, and works of narrative nonfiction. His A Short History of Nearly Everything makes science and history exciting, and A Walk in the Woods actually had me thinking that I, too, wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail. When I need an escape that is both informative and entertaining, Bryson is my first choice, and In a Sunburned Country—his account of adventures in Australia—has everything I’ve come to know and love.
Bryson jumps right in with a brief introduction to the history of Australia, beginning with the history of colonization and the fact that Britain orginally used Australia as a prison camp. Interesting, right? As he explores Australia from the big cities to the desolate outback (it gets really hot there, by the way) and discusses the social and cultural history of Australians and its scientific significance (Australia has more species of plants and animals found only in one place in the world than any other location), Bryson works in anecdotes from his personal experiences and misadventures down under, and that’s why I love him so much. His narrative agility and his ability to weave research into story so deftly is unparalleled, at least in travel writing, where so many books feel like “Day One: Went to X, Did Y, Saw Z; lather, rinse, repeat.”
In a Sunburned Country taught me about people, places, and things I’d never heard of before, including a number of snakes, spiders, and insects who could kill me with a single bite, and it provided a beautiful, dangerous, occasionally frightening escape from the “real world.” I didn’t even mind that Bryson took a turn for the serious to explore Australia’s treatment of its indigenous people, the Aborigines, because he did it with great intelligence, insight, and depth of feeling.
And that just goes to show you that travel writing doesn’t have to be vapid, reliant on jokes about poop, or filled with convenient and stereotypical epiphanies. It can be substantial and educational, and it can assume a certain level of intelligence and worldliness from its readers, and still be wonderful and successful and widely read.
Oh, dear God, how I hope Bill Bryson will continue to be widely read.
Whether you’re looking for a virtual warm-weather getaway, an adventure in a faraway land, a few good laughs, or a new favorite author, Bill Bryson and In a Sunburned Country will deliver….even though this isn’t my favorite of Bryson’s books (the aforementioned A Walk in the Woods holds a special place in my heart for most chuckle-inducing read ever), it is most excellent, and I highly recommend it. 4.5 out of 5.
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