“Three Men on the Bummel” by Jerome K. Jerome

A sequel to Three Men in a Boat, this book follows our eponymous heroes who are now older and, supposedly, wiser, on a holiday to Germany. I loved Three Men In A Boat when I read it earlier in the year, and wasn’t expecting this sequel to be as good. In fact, I thought it was by far the more entertaining book.

This seemed much more like a novel than the first book, where the author had tried to include local history in to the narrative. The three men are now older and decide to take a bicycle ride through Germany, and this time we get their side of the story about how they get on together (or don’t) as well as the various escapades they find themselves in along the way of their journey. We learn about the family life (now two of them are married with children) and get a glimpse of to society of the times through their eyes.

It was funny! I smiled almost all the way through – there’s something about the contemporary language of that era that makes me chuckle anyway, but knowing it was written in that period makes it feel even more real and authentic, and gives it an extra level of humour.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the final chapter. After having seemingly made a very definite decision to make this the story of the three men, the conclusion is an essay on the modern Germany of the time, which was dry and felt a let down after a very funny, very charming story of three friends.

Apart from that it was very, very entertaining and great fun.
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“Bel-Ami” by Guy de Maupassant

After serving in the military in Algeria, George Duroy decides to move to Paris to start his new career, but after an uninspiring start, a chance meeting with an old friend, Forestier, leads to a new job as a journalist on La Vie Francaise. With help from his friends wife, his first article is a success, and he soon finds himself caught up in politics and a society full of corruption and deceit, but his swift ascendence up the social hierarchy is only achieved by learning the art of manipulation and seduction.

This was the best book I’ve read so far this year. Absolutely engrossing from the start, I thought this tale of society and morals was wickedly funny and fantastically observed. While the characterisation of George Duroy is exquisite, a man I felt I knew inside and out by the end of the book, the women he is involved with are all wonderful inventions who feel very real and well drawn, with their different foibles and personalities making them in turns sympathetic, ridiculous and manipulative, almost as much as George himself.

The most astounding thing for me, however, was the conclusion. It’s difficult to discuss without spoiling it, but I had expectation of how the themes of redemption and morality would be applied for each of the characters, but there were certainly some surprises as to how each story was resolved. Definitely not a run of the mill tale, and all the better for it.

Beautifully written, elegant plotting, and an engrossing, satisfying read. If this doesn’t make my top five reads of the year, then I’ll be very surprised.

“Three Men In A Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome

What a little gem of a book this is! Perfectly evoking the era of the late 19th Century, this witty narrative of three young men embarking on a boating break is just charming. Quintessentially English, J. has decided he has every ailment in the medical dictionary, to which his doctor prescribes him:

1 lb. of beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don’t stuff up you head with things you don’t understand.

A canvas covered boat, meandering down the river Thames from Kingston to Oxford, results in a series of anecdotes about the places they visit, the people they meet, as well as the realities of three young men spending 24 hour a day in each others company. Although there are some elements of a travelogue about the story, the best elements are definitely the observations of the three young men living together, and while we only see this from J’s point of view, it is written in such a way to allow you to read between the lines and see the reality of their various predicaments. For example, J. obviously thinks he is doing all the work to keep the boat and the trip moving along nicely, but each of the others thinks they are also taking on more than their own fair share of chores!

The humour and style reminded me a lot of The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, a book I thoroughly enjoyed last year, and I’ll definitely be reading the follow up to this one, Three Men on the Bummel.

“Cranford” by Elizabeth Gaskell

Centred around the fictional village of Cranford, this book by Elizabeth Gaskell is a charming, comic look at the genteel early Victorian village community with its predominately female population resolved to maintain their traditions and society, resisting the onward march of the progress.

While I loved the writing style, the subject and the characters, I found I’d been spoiled by watching the BBC adaptation first. The trouble with reading the book second was that the stories and events were in a different order to the adaptation, different characters got married (or even died!) than did on the television, and whereas dialogue is obviously important in the visual medium, the style of the writing (similar to a journal) didn’t include much actual dialogue and the nature of conversation is implied rather than written.

I think if I’d read the book before having seen the series I would have loved it, and although I can usually isolate the two mediums and view them as separate entities, in this case, I just couldn’t achieve that. I will, however, look to read North and South by Gaskell, as I’ve never seen it on screen, and I think I will enjoy the style, and the period, characters and society the author writes about.