4.5 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
Dervla Murphy is legendary in the genre of travel writing. The book she is best known for, Full Tilt, is the record of her ride from Ireland to India. It was something that she wanted to do from the age of 10 when the dual presents of a bicycle and an atlas gave her this idea. Because she had to look after her mother she wasn’t able to do this until the age of 32.
She kept a diary and was persuaded to write it up and send it to a guy called Jock Murray. The rest is history and this was the first of 27 books she wrote over the course of 50 years of her travels all over the world. She travelled simply, preferring to be on her trusty bike, Roz and relying on the hospitality of the people that she encountered on her journeys. Having a daughter didn’t stop her and Rachel would become a companion on her travels in later stories.
This book is a compilation of all the books that Murphy wrote. Crowley has separated the books out into the decades that they were written and picked her favourite passages from this book. For me, it shows two things, her evolution as a writer and the way she changes from somebody being amazed by all the things she saw to someone who became appalled by the poverty and injustices of the world.
If you are a fan of Dervla Murphy then I would say this is an essential addition to your collection. Highly recommended.
I can’t work out if I want this or not as I have or have read an awful lot of her books over the years and I’ll want more every time I read excerpts! But I’m glad it’s been published.
That probably means that you want a copy, but don’t know where to put it! I am glad too, she was quite some force to be reckoned with from what I hear and I have been delighted to have met her daughter too now.