Ben Aitken’s Dear Bill Bryson (Footnotes from a Small Island)* follows the titular American’s 1995 tour of this fair Isle’s quaint villages, towns, cities,  pubs, roadside cafes, bus terminals and Wigan. It is, in the words of its author, a “less funny version of the original.” As a fan of Bryson myself, I confess that I did not think this book any funnier than Notes from a Small Island, but I did find it thoroughly more engaging.

The book wastes no time with an extended explanation of its premise. Bryson is one of Aitken’s heroes and he thinks it would be fun and/or hopefully interesting to follow his journey around the country. Using Bryson as his guide he attempts, and largely succeeds in, visiting every location the American did, and even goes so far as to try and replicate the exact events and encounters had along the way. Starting in Calais/Dover and ending in a somewhat-touching, somewhat-worrying street in front of Bryson’s old house, Dear Bill Bryson is a travelogue, homage, critique and sometimes-farce rolled into one.

The project of the book is, unfortunately, its biggest weakness. Following Bryson’s original route and observations means that the book suffers from the same issues present in the original. Aitken’s praiseworthy attention to the minutiae of Bryson’s journey can, at times, make it hard to differentiate between the two sets of experiences. On at least two occasions the author accidentally refers to himself as ‘Bill’, and this association can become cloying. It becomes hard to sympathise with a man who, in trying to follow in the footsteps of a man who had a bad day trying to find a ditch to walk down, has a bad day trying to find a ditch to walk down.

One of the undoubted strengths of the book is Aitken’s grasp of dialogue which he handles deftly, often forming welcome breaks between extended descriptions of location and introspection. Aitken crafts the interactions between himself and those he encounters as believable enough – though sufficiently written to be bearable. In fact I would be happy to see, in text at least, more of the bizarre and just-on-the-real-side-of-not of ex SAS-man Gary Gunn. With Gunn and his ilk, Aitken hints at an ability to draw people beyond two-dimensional caricatures, but such characters are transitory and there is always the impulse to drive on with the mission.

That mission is ostensibly to ‘finish’ Bryson. For a book which bills itself (the punning becomes infectious) as something of a time-filler for its author, the end result is a surprisingly poignant comment on the current state of the country being rambled through. Aitken, refreshingly, makes little to no attempt to disguise his politics, which in turn makes his commentary on the effects of austerity, climate change and immigration (et al) feel genuine. Though at times this contrasts with the wry humour of the book, for the most part the two sides of Aitken’s writing are complementary.

What some may find difficult to warm to is Aitken’s opinions on certain locations. Of course, writing about anywhere in anything other than the most anodyne terms will always elicit claims that the author has ‘got it wrong’, and the risk is even more present here. Unlike Bryson, Aitken does not share the important caveat of being an American outsider, and whilst this makes his criticisms more exact and incisive it also makes them less sympathetic. This is not a bad thing but, for those readers used to Bryson’s Midwestern grumbles, it can seem initially jarring. Likewise Aitken’s writing occasionally suffers from attempting to over-ape Bryson’s. This causes the tone to shift rapidly between that of an astute, if cynical, observer to an unreliable and self-deprecating narrator. The book is at its best when the humour opens up a digression on, say, the issue of Polish immigration to a previously sleepy rural community than when it focusses on bowel movements. Again, it’s not that the humour is lacking, but that it obscures better writing behind it.

The book is funny. If you are a British fan of Bryson, then I am confident in saying that Aitken will get a laugh from you, even if at points you feel that laugh to have been purchased on credit. It is my personal hope that his next book focuses more on Ben than Bill but, truly, the best thing about Dear Bill Bryson is the fact that it is not Bill Bryson but someone new.  It would be a wrong to view it as just a highly accomplished homage to a personal hero. Aitken’s politics, as much as his humour, are firmly in the spotlight, and Dear Bill Bryson achieves more than its title (possibly even its author) intended.

*Reviewing a book which follows another book around a country purportedly full of bizarre names in which both authors are prone to digression in the style of yet other authors makes for great difficulty in achieving clarity and/or retaining sanity.
 
Callum Coles

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