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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
I've just finished reading Around the World in Eighty Days to the kids at bedtime. It was the first time any of us had read the story, so we're all dealing with the confusion and disappointment that comes with reading such a well-known story and finding that it's not at all what we expected. The book opens with a very amusing and quirky introduction to the characters, and we were instantly hooked. And then . . . it becomes long lists of place names. Not information about the places, usually: just lists of names as the characters pass through. Phileas Fogg, one of literature's most boring characters, doesn't change during his journey, and his personality is inexplicable. Passepartout makes choices of what to do (and not to do) along the way that are infuriating and nonsensical. And the trick at the end of the story is so stupid, so illogical, so maddening . . . I would almost rather that the whole thing had been a dream.
There are a few amusing bits along the way: the performance of the Long Noses, some moments in the journey across America. But generally this book was not at all what I was expecting from one of the great classic adventure stories.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the story is that money paves the way ahead for Fogg, constantly. Traveling around the world in eighty days, it turns out, is not really possible--unless you are fabulously wealthy to begin with. We were disgusted with how often Fogg can save his itinerary simply by throwing around a bunch of cash. This is at its worst during the Henrietta incident, crossing the Atlantic.
Like many editions of Around the World, the paperback I was reading features a hot-air balloon on the cover. We spent the whole book waiting for that scene with the hot-air balloon. Like others who have read the book and waited for that scene, the joke was on us.
