Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan by Will Ferguson – review

 

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First published in 1998, this travelogue recounts the author's – Will Ferguson's – hitchhiking adventure from the south of Japan to it's most northern point, following the blooming cherry blossoms as spring washes across the country.

The arrival of the cherry blossoms is of great importance to the Japanese, a celebrated moment in the calendar. And Ferguson tells of how he announced to colleagues (he taught English in Japan), after a little too much saké, that he would hitchhike a journey, following the blossoms blooming across the country, to really celebrate their coming. To give the moment its proper due. 

Swept along by the ensuing enthusiasm of his colleagues and, as it turns out, probably a lack of satisfaction with his life, he commits himself to his expedition . . .

I am finding it hard to drum up the words for this book. It left me torn.

For a start, I think that I would've probably hated hitchhiking with the author on the trip he details. Readers might be grateful for only experiencing the trip via Ferguson's telling.

He falls in love with every woman with whom he has even the slightest of encounters, if they are pretty enough in his eyes. 

And his attitude towards the wildlife of Japan is to sit resolutely in his ignorance, to anthropomorphise, giving himself reason to justify fear and mockery. That's a bit of a personal bugbear, but from reading other of Ferguson's work, I know he is not incapable of study and understanding. That he is capable of balancing the humour with fact and reason. 

However, the reader should reflect upon the title of the book perhaps, before judging the author too harshly – Hokkaido Highway Blues. This book is not just the recounting of a trip across Japan, it is a man reflecting on his place in the world. Sometimes literally his place in the world. It is a realisation that some journeys need to be taken not because of where we are going, but because it is time to leave. 

The very notion of trying to follow spring, the arrival of cherry blossoms, hitchhiking across Japan to do so, speaks to that desperate desire to some have to keep ahold of what is passing. The lengths that people go to trying to hold onto things that are meant to be temporary. Can only ever be temporary.

When the author tells of finding himself in parts of Japan still touched by cold and brutal winter, it reflects his feelings of discontent.

It is notable that his journey ultimately ends not with sunshine and blossoms, but with a storm and the inability to travel any further.

This is a tricky read. Enjoyable because Ferguson is a talented writer, and capable of great insight, humour, and something poetic at times. But difficult because the writer is cynical and, as he is in the chapter of his life he details here at least, struggling with feelings of dissatisfaction. Once the reader realises this though, that deeper feelings might be the root of the surface sourness, perhaps they can forgive the writer some of his surly sarcasm, and consider his telling with some understanding.

My advice might be to consider that the author's outward attitude in this book – towards the landscape, the people, and the pursuit itself at the centre of this book – says much about where he was himself emotionally. That any discomfort you feel as he falls for another woman on the road or when he winds up in some cheap hotel, alone and drunk, is intended. Being human means sometimes being unlikeable as we deal with our shit. That the discomfort you feel, may be what the author felt as his hitchhiking became a journey of self-discovery. 

And self-discovery isn't always sweeping music, cinematic shots, and uplifting quotes – affirmation porn. Sometimes it's another shitty path you have to walk a while.

We need books to remind us of that too.

Do I recommend this book?

Yes, I do. Ferguson really is a talented writer, capable of wonderful insight. But he isn't always likeable here. But, if you stop and consider why that could be, you might find yourself returning to the pages with empathy and understanding.

You can purchase Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson here.

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Thank you for reading!

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie – review

 

Disclaimer: this blog is affiliated with third party sellers. If you make a purchase through the links in this blog, I might earn a small commission from the sale. However, this does not impact upon the cost of items, and it does not influence the content of this blog. 

I suppose it is really quite unoriginal, and maybe old fashioned, to say that one of my most favourite fictional detectives is Hercule Poirot.

Still, there is something about this quite fastidious, sometimes feline-like, but certainly not French little detective. With stiff little moustaches decorating his egg-shaped head, he has cut a distinctive figure in the world of detective fiction for just over one-hundred years. Ever since he appeared in Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920, he has earned his place amongst the best and most recognisable of crime fiction's most famous detectives.

But his distinctive appearance and fussy attitude would be nothing if it weren't for those "little grey cells", which were put to such great use over the course of five decades in Christie's original novels and short stories featuring the detective.

In 1941, Evil Under the Sun, was published; Poirot's second decade as depicted by the Queen of Crime . And this novel, despite Christie's burgeoning dislike for the character, proves that his powers of detection and desire for justice had not waned with the passing decades.

In this mystery, a body lies upon a beach – the body of Arlena Marshall. She is bronzed, and appears like any other sunbathing beauty holidaying in the area, stretched out with flesh bare to the sun. However, upon closer inspection, it's plain to see that Arlena Marshall is not sunbathing. She is dead. The life strangled out of her by some unknown individual. 

A mad, lone, and opportunistic attacker? Or someone known to the victim?

Other guests, holidaying at the same hotel as Arlena Marshall, had been quick to consider Arlena as wicked, a temptress. But it seems, as Poirot had suspected, she was always much more likely to be a victim than any kind of fiend.

And so, the little Belgian seeker of truth and justice begins investigating . . .

I suppose that it is his desire for truth and justice, rather than a slavish loyalty to the law, which partly makes Poirot such an attractive fictional figure. As evidenced in other stories featuring the detective, perhaps most notably Murder on the Orient Express, he does deviate from the rule of law to strive to do what is right.

And, a character that strives to do that can't ever really go out of fashion. An odd little hero, striving for what is right in a unjust world.

Christie can be considered cosy crime, but she did point a finger at, or at least hint towards, some of the darkness in the world.

I began reading Christie when I was a young teenager, and tore through her stories at a furious pace. Finishing one book, finding another, and so on. As an adult, I return to find that, unlike many things which seemed like a good idea in adolescence but which, in retrospect, were always pretty horrid, Christie's mysteries are still a joy.

I urge you to return too. And if you are yet to discover Poirot, and other of Christie's creations, oh, how I envy you!

You can purchase a copy of Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie here.

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