Rating: 4 out of 5

The follow on book to “News from Gardenia”, which I loved, this book follows Gavin’s journey through an equally strange (to him) England. I didn’t find this as engaging and richly transportive as “News from Gardenia” but I still enjoyed it. The character of Gavin is very well put together and his responses to the various events that happens to him seem to be appropriate and well described.

I did find the level of copy editing errors annoying tho - things like ‘damn’ instead of ‘dam’, “move” instead of “moved”, “thatday” instead of “that day”, “peace” instead of “piece”. I ended up noting them on my kindle which is a really good indication that there were too many of them. A shame as it distracted from an entertaining piece of writing.

Highlighted passages:

Theweleit really got to the nub of the European male dilemma. The books were more a study of a group in society who had enjoyed unparalleled power, privilege and cultural dominance for thousands of years.Obviously I’m talking about men. To be specific, white, European men who had created and controlled the monarchy, military, legal and religious systems and national governance without let or hindrance for as long as anyone was able to remember.

politicians with short terms in office always made short-term decisions. Politicians who know they are going to be in power for a long time tend to make longer-term decisions more carefully, knowing they are very likely to still be in a position of responsibility when whatever decision they make comes to fruition.’

Kwo was the global currency, not based and backed by gold or some arbitrary algorithm produced by a national bank, it was based on kilowatt hours.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account