I started my reread before attending the play and had gotten through the first 50 pages, which is mostly about his first visit to England in 1973 (including a stay in a Dover boarding-house presided over by the infamously officious “Mrs Smegma”). We presented tickets as my in-laws’ Christmas present and accompanied them to a mid-February matinee before supper at ours.Ī few members of my book club decided to see the show later in the run and suggested we read – or reread, as was the case for several of us – the book in March.
The answer is yes and no, but it was entertaining and we were glad that we went. When we heard that Notes from a Small Island (1995), his account of a valedictory tour around Britain before returning to live in the States for the first time in 20 years, had been adapted into a play by Tim Whitnall and would be performed at our local theatre, the Watermill, we thought, huh, it never would have occurred to us to put this particular book on stage. Sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to see things clearly. As I, too, was falling in love with the country, I found much to relate to in his travel-based memoirs of expatriate life and temporary returns to the USA. He is a particular favourite of my husband and in-laws, who got me into his work back in the early to mid-2000s. Bill Bryson, an American author of humorous travel and popular history or science books, is considered a national treasure in his adopted Great Britain.
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