Wherever he goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging, and these beaming products of land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine fill the pages of this wonderful book.Īustralia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiousity.ĭespite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet.
His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. It is a terrible burden to bear.Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. Bill Bryson is best known for writing very humorous travel books, and In a Sunburned Country is indeed a funny account of his travels in Australia. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers’ hems. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations.
From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. Whatever is inside-tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air-decides to leak out. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner my knuckles brush the floor. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket I look as if I could do with medical attention. “I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper.
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