A Time of Gifts

Rating:
Summary: Astoundingly erudite, intimately descriptive
Review: For a drop-out from English public school in that long-lost time of classical and European belle-lettres, Fermor shows an overwhelmingly informed perspective to those of us brought up in humbler classrooms in a more multicultural but ironically far less educated age. Amazing that a footloose teenager could bring such depth to a grand tour on foot, seeing Mitteleuropa on a pound or so a week and the advantage of lots of largesse from the peasants, fellow tramps, and more noble hosts he meets seemingly without fail.

For instance, his dozen pages describing his Viennese pal, Konrad, who speaks in Shakespearean argot picked up from a book of the Bard, are worth more than countless other heftily paginated but intellectually fluffy travelogues; Fermor truly has a knack for meeting the best companions or at least making us and himself believe he's met such on the road! I found his level of past and present exposure to various languages and ability to, say, warble Virgil or Horace as he walked along truly marvelous, if hard to relate to today! The amount of knowledge he packs into these pages can be daunting for those less multi-lingual than himself, and I didn't catch every reference he makes, but that's no fault of his. More four stars for the effort I put into the book showing my ignorance rather than any inability of his to keep me turning the pages. It merely shows the gap between the world from which he came in class, education, and opportunity vs. our own.

Especially moving are brief footnotes here and there which comment on the fates of a few of the friends he makes in his German stint; the contrast between his future and theirs only a few years after 1934 adds poignancy and heft to his reflections.
Certainly an account worthy of seeking out and making it again better known.

Reminiscent in ease of tone, level of learning, and finely crafted style to the books of Arabian and Middle Eastern travel by the current British writer/scholar Tim Mackintosh-Smith, "Yemen" and "Travels with a Tangerine."

Rating:
Summary: A True Delight
Review: Sometimes one stumbles across a book almost by accident, and finds something truly delightful. This book was one of those experiences. The story is interesting, but the true genius of this book is in the descriptions of the people he meets along the way. The young girls who sneak him into a party, the aging aristocrats who take him in and look after him, the customers in the German beer hall, and many others. When the book is done, you will feel as if you had met these people in real life, and you will want to go back and read about them again. One of the best books I have read this year.

Rating:
Summary: You may want to read this unusual book more than once.
Review: This book is not so much a travelogue as the record of one young man's emergence into the world beyond the schoolroom. It retains the freshness of first experience, even though Fermor actually wrote the book years later.
The aging and mellowing of the memories has distilled them into a complex narrative. Fermor moves with ease from erudite discussion of obsure linguistic references, to howlingly funny narratives of his mishaps on tour. His prose evokes a feeling of authentic immersion in a Europe which wholly vanished in the agony of WWII.
From the opening chapter, with a Conrad-esque departure from London down to the sea, to the Easter-tide pause on the bridge over the Danube, this story is enthralling.
The young Fermor set a goal to travel only on foot. The reader experiences a leisurely pace, and many contacts with people of all sorts throughout each country on the trek.
Fortunately, Fermor wrote 'From the Woods to the Water', a continuation of his journey which holds possibly even more riches than 'A Time of Gifts'. The two should be read in sequence.