Skye High (Common Reader Editions)

Rating:
Summary: The Bill Brysons of 1930s Great Britain
Review: Hesketh Pearson and Hugh Kingsmill, thirty-something Britishers, ex-college pals and underemployed writers, got the idea to tramp around 1930s Scotland re-creating a similar trip by the famous Samuel Johnson and James Boswell in the 1760s. "Skye High" contains the observations, and sometimes the transcript of, their trip. Much of the text takes the form of snippets of dialogue, as though it were a play script.

The tone is humorous, even witty, but light as cotton candy. You won't find anything resembling social commentary or lyrical evocations of the Highlands natural beauty. Just two young Brits, old pals, teasing each other mercilessly and cracking each other up. People of Scottish descent may even be perturbed by the authors' tendency to make slight fun of the natives.

The humor is nevertheless infectious, and it's fun enough to read (like Bill Bryson in that way). But the whole book comes to a grinding halt in the last 30 pages, which are devoted to the sermons of some old eccentric 18th-century preacher, connected to the Scotland story only because Boswell was a fan of the sermonizer. It had roughly the same effect on the previously light-hearted story as if Bryson had replaced the last chapter of "A Walk in the Woods" with a lengthy discussion of the theology of Cotton Mather.