Narrow Dog To Indian River - a review

There's an old Peter Cook joke about two old actors at a cocktail party:

"So what are you doing now?"
"I'm writing a book."
"Neither am I."

Anyone who's dreamed of one day - one day, one day, finally - writing a best-seller must have been heartened by Terry Darlington's example.

Terry was in the autumn of his years and long-retired when his literary debut, Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, was published in 2005, and it became an immediate best-seller.  It was a very funny account of braving certain death on the English Channel, taking his narrowboat and whippet (to say nothing of the wife) down to the Mediterranean.

He does it again with Narrow Dog To Indian River.  This new book, published on April 7th, catalogues their 6-month trip down the US East Coast Intracoastal Waterway and across Florida, reaching the Gulf of Mexico in February 2007.

The American trip wasn't plain sailing, and by the sound of it was nearly called off a couple of times, including a moment when the author suffered a hernia that gave him an insight into American medicine.

Many of the obstacles seemed to be serious but Darlington makes light of them. Whenever disaster looms, there's always something absurd or miraculous to rescue them, and any tension or distress is turned into a British stiff upper lip.

Americans of the Oprah era want to share your pain, but Englishmen like him are self-effacing about their difficulties and invite us to laugh at their distress.

Like many travel books, Indian River is at its weakest on the actual travelling part. With Terry behind the tiller - well, one river is a bit like another, to be frank.  And once you've seen one floating log (or mistaken it for an alligator) you've seen all alligators (or mistaken them for logs).  Although even then, Terry manages to spring a few surprises.

But  when they moor up and explore the communities and meet the people, that's when Indian River really shines. 

He has a gift for a simile that reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse.  When he takes his whippet Jim for a run, the dog 'swept around the horizon like a second hand'.  When he inadvertently runs aground in the Carolina mud, Monica's cold angry stare is 'the one that can freeze gin'.  A group of elderly women is 'a sea of cotton' (I pictured a multitude of bouffant silver heads, because I've seen a cotton field, in Alabama), while Monica dismisses his love of easy-listening orchestral music as 'Mantovani pouring over my carpet like treacle'.

(At this point, I remembered my diesel heater leaking onto Granny's own carpet, two years ago. Ouch.  I'll never listen to Semprini the same way again)

Indian River mines the same vein as the first book.  It's not so much a new book; not even a sequel, more of a new chapter:  The same distinctive voice, the same dry humour, the same acute observation of foreign cultures.  And at times he makes the American South sound just as foreign as France. (Mind you, he can do the same to England in places)

If you finished Carcassonne and were hungry for more, Indian River is simply the second course.  If you are new to Darlington you can start with Indian River without spoiling your appetite for the earlier work.

But if Carcassonne irritated or bored you (and it did a few - see the Amazon review 'Narrow Dog that didn't deliver'), this new volume won't satisfy either.

One of the design pleasures of both books is the charming illustrations by Chris Corr. He stamps his identity on Narrow Dog like E.H. Shepherd on Winnie the Pooh.

Who is Chris Corr? Find about him on www.christophercorr.com, but his website is one of those execrable 'Flash' things, and not compatible with my hi-res computer screen. Sigh. (When will artists and architects learn they are being taken for suckers by 'Flash' website designers?)   I love his faux-naïf illustrations, but I can't find any of them to link to; that's the problem with Flash. 

(If you want to see other examples of faux-naïf, try Loobylu, the blog of Claire Robertson - another wonderful such illustrator.  If anyone feels generous, would you like to commission Claire to do a picture of me at the tiller of Granny Buttons?)

This latest book is the first I've ever seen with the following publishers' caveat:

This book is a work of non-fiction … The author has stated to the publishers that… the contents of this book are true.

A non-fiction book usually has an index. The glory of both of Darlington's books is the index, here called 'Quotations, References, Echoes'.  In this he acknowledges almost everything he needs to, and it's a terrific spot-the-quotation game.  In fact, I think it should be a separate pull-out section, so you can tick off the quotes as you meet them.

So: Yes, I loved this book.  But what's he's got against the English canals?  Why can't he stay at home and write about the Midlands?  A canal guide like Pearson's or Nicholson's would be wonderful if published alongside a Darlington-style script.

It will be interesting to see if he can resist the siren call to make it a trilogy.  Narrow Dog to Yellow River?  Song of the Volga Narrow Dog?  Narrow Dog to the Source of the Nile?  Narrow Dog and the Last Crusade?

Terry Darlington ends Narrow Dog to Indian River with a love poem to his wife that made me cry just as (in the book) she did.  As love poetry it doesn't quite measure up to Thomas Hardy or Shakespeare, but that's not the point, is it?

What will survive of us is love.

Is there any bit of this book that left me frustrated? Well, yes. What's the specification of NB Phyllis May? What's its layout, its engine? Who built the shell? Who did the fitout, the signwriting?  Does it have a boatman's cabin?  Is it a pumpout or a portapotti? Is it gas-free? Diesel heating, or wood-fired?  You know, the important stuff for canal boaters. How can he leave us unsatisfied like this?

More information (but not the important stuff that boaters want to know) can be found on the author's own website: www.narrowdog.com.   

Comments

[Andrew Denny]

Thanks for spotting that Martin. Blogs don't need sub-editors, only readers :-)

[Martin]

OK, if we're being picky, how about 'But what's he's got against the English canals?'
(n.b. I think I prefer 'stary' apostrophes!)

[Andy]

Phyllis May is moored opposite The Star in Stone or at least she was last November so when you pass in two weeks time you'll be able to write about the builder spec and layout of the boat!

Andy

[Andrew Denny]

OK, thanks Sarah, well-spotted! I've corrected it.

(For the record, it was the penultimate para, 'What's it's layout, its engine?')

[Sarah]

Stray apostrophe! Stray apostrophe!