Non-fiction 14 Apr 2007 03:00 pm
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Bill Bryson
Taking a break from his travel-related books, Bryson takes a trip to America in the 1950s and brings it back to us in this book. It’s a tale of life in a simpler time, when everyone was naïve, happy and indestructible, no one used seating belts or helmets and cigarettes were good for you.
It’s not an adventure book; Bryson is the first to admit that he had a very uneventful childhood. But he turns all that dullness into a very human story, full of laugh-out-loud moments. I was born in the 1970s, but I can relate to the nostalgic feeling of thinking back to our childhood and to the simpler world of that time (made even simpler when looked through the eyes of a child). And also to the sinking feeling of going back years later to the place you came from and realising that, actually, you can’t ever go back there: that place exists only in your memories.
