Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
Jonathan Raban
Picador 2010
I’ve enjoyed Raban’s writing for getting on for 25 years. He’s written three good novels, but for me what he does best is travel writing and journalism. This 600 page door-stopper is a collection of both, pulled together from the work he has done since he moved to Seattle in 1990. It’s a fascinating pot pourri, a lot of it about the area of the United States in which has settled, of course, but with some fascinating excursions into politics (in particular the “War on Terror” and the period leading up to Obama’s election), literature (Larkin, Empson, Malamud) and the more personal. Raban is an assured writer – witty, humane, never pompous or self-aggrandising – and his prose is a joy to read. He has the knack of making the reader interested in things he never thought he would be (fishing and sailing, for instance, in my case) and in this book paints such a vivid picture of Washington State that I almost feel I have been there. If there’s one criticism I can make of Driving Home, it is that the nature of the pieces, culled as they are from both British and American newspapers and magazines, means that they occasionally repeat themselves a little. It’s inevitable I suppose, and doesn’t detract from what is a wonderful book to lose oneself on a winter’s evening. For a reminder of what good writing is all about, Raban is hard to beat.
18 January 2012
http://www.jonathanraban.com/
See also: Surveillance
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