Peripatus Home Page  pix1Black.gif (807 bytes)  Books >> Genre >> Travel >> Penelope Goes West Updated: 22 Feb 2004 

Penelope Goes West (Tim Bowden, 1999)

Check Amazon for this book: International (Amazon.co.uk)

ISBN 1-8650-8307-0

 
 

Further Reading

By the Same Author

  • The Silence Calling
  • Antarctica and Back in Sixty Days

Similar Writing

  
 

An informative travel diary, amusingly written, by which I mean the tone is light and there is a handful of modestly good one-liners.

Some sense of continuity is provided by the historical accounts of southern Australian exploration, principally revolving around the expeditions of Eyre and Flinders, and by the persistent nature of the author's travel arrangements: a collapsible camper van towed by his Toyota Landcruiser. Despite this, though, the intrinsically choppy character of a travel (or any) diary is the real shaping force of this book, emphasised by the inconsistent use of past and present tenses.

This is not a Bryson or a Theroux, but ok for a light read, especially if you can pick the book up in a bargain bin somewhere. Unless your grasp of southern Australian geography is better than mine, which would not be difficult, you may benefit from having a decent atlas near at hand. The crappy little map supplied between the introduction and chapter one is utterly useless. I can't imagine why they even bothered to include it.

Recommendation: Sort of recommended.

Look and Feel: My edition is the usual matt-finish paperback. The dozen or so photograph pages are in colour, and the reproduction quite good, though the selection is baffling.

 Peripatus Home Page  pix1Black.gif (807 bytes)  Books >> Genre >> Travel >> Penelope Goes West Contact me.