I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away Review

Bill Bryson's I'M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF is a collection of newspaper articles he wrote between 1996 and 1998 for a London newspaper. As the subtitle, Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away, indicates, the pieces mostly concern Bryson's readjustments to being in the States after living abroad, in the U.K., for so long. Upon returning to the United States, Bryson, an American, sought with his English wife a "nice place" in which to live. They settled on and in quaint Hanover, NH, home of prestigious Dartmouth College.

The articles, which were published weekly and by and large unfold with a certain sequential coherence, work best when they are focused on Bryson's observations of America as a returnee: everything's familiar, or becomes so again, tinged with the distinct alienation that comes from living abroad: he sees things as if new again. Written for a British readership, the columns appeal to a certain British sense of humor--occasionally you feel as if you're eavesdropping on a joke, but still you laugh. Bryson's trenchant criticism of American follies of government and society almost invariably hit the mark as well. His parodies of the IRS tax form and the computer set-up guide are less successful, perhaps because the models on which they're based are already ridiculous and, more to the point, tedious.

In fact, the more Bryson strays into invention, the less compelling his prose. Far more enjoyable are his seemingly effortless observations, including such slight things as the sound of a porch screen door banging shut in summer. What's more, his commentary on ordinary daily life as well as on the greater American political and social scene is laugh-out-loud hilarious and dead on. This is a quick read and highly enjoyable.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away Feature

• ISBN13: 9780767903820
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I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away Overview

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 3 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. 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.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away Specifications

In the world of contemporary travel writing, Bill Bryson, the bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods, often emerges as a major contender for King of Crankiness. Granted, he complains well and humorously, but between every line of his travel books you can almost hear the tinny echo: "I wanna go home, I miss my wife."

Happily, I'm a Stranger Here Myself unleashes a new Bryson, more contemplative and less likely to toss daggers. After two decades in England, he's relocated to Hanover, New Hampshire. In this collection (drawn from dispatches for London's Night & Day magazine), he's writing from home, in close proximity to wife and family. We find a happy marriage between humor and reflection as he assesses life both in New England and in the contemporary United States. With the telescopic perspective of one who's stepped out of the American mainstream and come back after 20 years, Bryson aptly holds the mirror up to U.S. culture, capturing its absurdities--such as hotlines for dental floss, the cult of the lawsuit, and strange American injuries such as those sustained from pillows and beds. "In the time it takes you to read this," he writes, "four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding."

The book also reflects the sweet side of small-town USA, with columns about post-office parties, dining at diners, and Thanksgiving--when the only goal is to "get your stomach into the approximate shape of a beach ball" and be grateful. And grateful we are that the previously peripatetic Bryson has returned to the U.S., turning his eye to this land--while living at home and near his wife. Under her benevolent influence, he entertains through thoughtful insights, not sarcastic stabs. --Melissa Rossi

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