Round Ireland in Low Gear

by Eric Newby, Wanda Newby

Release Date: October, 1998

Edition: Paperback

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Oddly Flat

I slogged my way through half of this book before I gave up. (My usual threshold is 50 pages) Eric & Wanda Newby cycle through Ireland in winter and are suprised/perturbed by the weather (?!!).

Mr. Newby is stangely self-centered. The book is a catalog of their travails with little comment on anyone they meet. I assume that he thought this would be humorous and entertaining, but after awhile I wanted him to shut up about himself and go home or get on with describing Ireland. When he does touch on history the descriptive passages seem to be read wholesale out of various guidebooks, which Newby acknowledges and feel like an add on instead of woven into their narrative. There are a few wonderful pages of landscape description but only enough to rate two stars and far too few to justify 298 pages.

I would not recommend this book. Instead read any of the late Thomas Flanagan's three novels about Ireland, The year of the French, The Tenants of Time or The End of the Hunt. Even Ray Bradbury's Green Shadows, White Whale (about living in Ireland while writing the screenplay for John Huston's film of Moby Dick.)

low mileage from Low Gear

can't help but agree with another reviewer and concur that this book neither inspires nor stimulates, an unexpected experience with Eric Newby's writing. The occasional and unwelcome slide into condescension displayed might well be a reflection of the author's mood. I suspect this might have resulted from an almost unbelievably bad choice of travel timing for a book of this nature. Ireland, in winter, on a bicycle? As gloomy a metereological prospect as the literary result. Try Tony Hawkes' 'Round Ireland with a Fridge' for an infinitely more enjoyable read.