Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson – review

 

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For the last couple of weeks I have been confined to bed with Covid-19. I haven't been anywhere, except in and out of sleep, coughing fits, and up and down in temperature. So, getting lost in Will Ferguson's travelogue, and "delving into Canada's history and landscape", offered some escape from my captivity. If only in my mind.

In Beauty Tips From Moosejaw, Ferguson details his criss-crossing journeys through Canada over the years, and describes the nation's landscape, its people, and past. And, in doing so, draws the reader closer to the essence of the country, its beating heart. 

Will Ferguson is a Canadian novelist and travel writer and, if you have read this blog before, you might remember that I reviewed another of his books, Hokkaido Highway Blues, here.

As with that other travelogue, the author imbues this work with something of the personal. However, the author's individual reflections and family history inform this book with less cynicism than Highway Blues. This time we find Ferguson a more positive man, with a wife and young children joining him on his travels. The reader here gets the sense that Ferguson found some reconnection with the land of his birth, and has found reasons to be optimistic since the journey detailed in that other book.

Near the beginning of Beauty Tips . . . , the author tells us of some of the ennui he felt for where he grew up – something many young people the world over will recognise. He even describes boredom with the Aurora borealis! But, towards the end, Ferguson is writing appreciatively about the country, waxing poetic, and how what and who went before informs the land today.

Just as Ferguson's book on his hitchhiking trip across Japan also details a journey of self-discovery, so too does this book. In one, the writer discovers that the journey had to be taken as a step towards leaving, in the other it is perhaps a step towards rediscovery and reclamation. 

I very much enjoyed the way this book moved seamlessly from past to present. Taking the reader to the earliest days of Canada's history, permeating the locales he describes with the lives that built and defined them, and back to the modern day. Tracing the delicate threads of a web.

The author describes history's reach through decades and centuries, and its ghostly presence in the here and now.

The author's use of these historical events is worked wonderfully into the book, and the reader's experience of the book is richer for its inclusion.

Reading Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw, the author's affection for his subject is clear. Introducing the reader to a country to which he is bound by history and the blood in his veins. Familial ties that stretch into the long past, a small part of the history he describes, and into the future through his children. He may mock it for its foibles or throw a light on its failures, as well as celebrate its beauty, but one feels that that is done with fondness too. A hope that it can be better.

Like any good piece of travel writing, this book inspires curiosity and wonder. If travel broadens the mind, so too does a good travel book. Yes, this is a book that inspires itchy feet in its reader!

You can purchase a copy of Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw here.

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Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan by Will Ferguson – 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 affiliation makes no difference to the cost of items. Neither does it influence the content of this blog. 

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!

Want to travel in your armchair?

 Disclaimer: Monsta Reader is affiliated with bookshop.org and Waterstones. If you should make a purchase through any of the links in this blog, I might earn a small commission from the sale. However, this does not affect the prices of items, and it does not influence the content of this blog.

With sunnier months on the horizon, minds turn to travel and holidays. And so, in this post, I am pulling five great pieces of travel writing from my bookshelves and considering what lies between the covers.

Come with me, armchair adventurers!

1. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

A very funny book.

At the age of forty-four, with his friend, Stephen Katz, Bill Bryson set off to hike the longest continuous footpath in the world; the Appalachian Trail. 

With brutal weather, insects seemingly striving to make the trek unbearable, unreliable maps and probably one of the least reliable hiking companions anyone could ask for, Bryson struggled on to achieve his ambition of hiking the trail, and not die in the process!

You can purchase A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson here.

2. The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Another Bryson because, well, he's one of the best travel writers to ever put fingers to a keyboard, not to mention one of the funniest.

This is Bryson's follow-up to Notes From a Small Island, his book about travels he took around Britain twenty-five years ago. To mark the twentieth anniversary of that best-seller, Bryson took another trip around this island and noted, once again, what he saw and experienced. Another humorous read from one of the masters of travel writing!

You can purchase The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson here.

3. Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw: Excursions in the Great Weird North by Will Ferguson

As all the best travel writing does, expect to be left with a desire to go wandering!

Will Ferguson spent three years travelling across Canada and back again. From seaplanes to canoes and many other modes of transport in between.

Along the way, the writer delves into Canada's history and landscape, explored here in this excellent book.

You can purchase Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson here.

4. Red Dust: A Path Through China by Ma Jian

An acclaimed and award-winning travel book from Ma Jian!

1983; a time of economic reform and youthful rebellion in Deng Xiaoping. Ma Jian's ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter and his girlfriend was sleeping with another man. At a point of personal and wider upheavals, one day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and began a journey to find himself.

This is a piece of travel-writing written by an author that can call their subject home, but who was also an outsider; it reveals China as a land of contradictions.

You can purchase Red Dust by Ma Jian here.

5. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee

'The stooping figure of my mother, waist-deep in the grass and caught there like a piece of sheep's wool, was the last I saw of my country home as I left it to discover the world'

In London, a young Laurie Lee made a living as a labourer and playing the violin. But, desiring further adventure, and with just a blanket and a violin, he spent a year crossing Spain, from north to south. I discovered Laurie Lee only recently, I am ashamed to say, but fell for his beautiful and lyrical writing immediately.

Laurie Lee's writing is just wonderful.

You can purchase As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee here.

Just before you go, can I ask that you please consider supporting this blog with a coffee from ko-fi.com - the caffeine keeps me following in the footsteps of the great travel-writers, if only only from the comfort of home . . .