I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson

[gilda_elise]

The master humorist and bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods now guides us on an affectionate, hysterically funny tour of America's most outrageous absurdities.

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly three million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new-and-improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. From motels ("one of those things--airline food is another--that I get excited about and should know better") to careless barbers ("in the mirror I am confronted with an image that brings to mind a lemon meringue pie with ears"), I'm a Stranger Here Myself chronicles the quirkiest aspects of life in America, right down to our hardware-store lingo, tax-return instructions, and vulnerability to home injury ("statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants than by a stranger").

Along the way Bill Bryson also reveals his rules for life (#1: It is not permitted to be both slow and stupid. You must choose one or the other); delivers the commencement address to a local high school ("I've learned that if you touch a surface to see if it's hot, it will be"); and manages to make friends with a skunk. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended, if at times bemused, love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

The book is a collection of articles written by the author for a weekly column in an English newspaper after his return to the US. He’s been away for twenty years and a lot has changed. Yet, some things, not at all.

Some of the articles are truly funny, while some just brought a smile or a quiet chuckle. I especially loved those whose experience I shared, such as going to the drive-in, or boarding a plane.

And then there are those that are thought provoking, as the author struggles with attitudes that have hardened while he was gone. Though written in 1999, many of those articles still resonate.

The book holds its own against other Bryson books. Though perhaps not as funny as A Walk in the Woods, it’s certainly on parr with In a Sunburned Country. It’s gentle touch made it well worth reading.






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I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson