I read Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman’s tale of their motorcycle expedition Eastward from London to New York while we were on holiday recently, and found it to be an enthralling read.

The book begins with a short excerpt from much later in the journey, before delving into the background of the two actors, lending some insight as to how they ended up taking on the treacherous trip.

Throughout the story the viewpoint changes between Ewan and Charlie’s narration, giving a good insight into how each stage of the trip is affecting them personally. Maybe it’s due to me being closer in age to Ewan, but I found his chapters a bit more readable than Charlie’s at first, mostly due to Charlie being a bit of a sulk at times.

The book really shines when they’re out in the middle of nowhere, relying on the goodwill of strangers to put them up for the night, or to repair a part on one of the bikes. Some of the trip comes across as soul destroying from the futility of their efforts against the harsh terrain, but it’s these sections which are the waypoints of the journey, and it’s hard to put the book down until they’ve emerged relatively unscathed at the next scheduled stop.

I’ve always admired Ewan McGregor due to the way he’s forged his own path through his career, trying his hand at each facet of his chosen art, so it was good to learn more about the man through the course of the book. His worries and his weaknesses are almost refreshing to read, when compared to the polished image of most movie stars.

It’s this aspect of the book that keeps it enjoyable to the end, as even when the most physically demanding part of the journey is over with, the men still have the emotional turbulance to deal with due to the time spent away from their families.

It’s that aspect that the book communicates to a far greater extent than the tv series, which went more for the drama of the geographical journey than it did the resulting spiritual one. By the last page I felt as if I’d been on that journey with them at times, despite me sitting in the warm Mediterranean sun whilst I read.
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I picked this autobiography up in early January, planning to save it as my holiday book on that ill advised trip to Malta. Although the holiday wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, the book was genuinely entertaining and shed a whole new light on Frank, or Chris Collins as he was born.

I’ve always found him entertaining in small doses, although I find his chat show a bit too cringeworthy to watch on a regular basis. Back in Y2K (haven’t heard that one in a while), Fliss and I went to see the play Cooking with Elvis starring Frank, and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. It was three parts smut to two parts smut and made no pretentions of being otherwise.

And that’s Frank, at the end of the day, and his book says as much. He comes across as a bit rough and working class because he is exactly those things, and although he’s enjoyed some fine success in the last ten years or so, what went before is a tale of a man who stumbles along wondering the same thing many of us wonder far too late into our lives – “what do I want to do when I grow up?”

His tone is informal and friendly throughout, and by the third page he says that if you’ve read that far then he considers you a mate and he might as well tell you the rest. It’s a nice touch, and as the book flits between present day and his childhood, you get a good idea of where Frank has been and where he’s at, all of the time never seeming to take life too seriously.

Along the way he breaks up with his girlfriend of the time, and their relationship had formed a prominent part of the commentary before that. He never wallows in the misery in a way that makes you feel you should drop your gaze, though, taking things like this in stride as much at the time of writing as he appears to have done all through his life.
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The religious undertones of this book would normally have had me running for cover, but when Fliss‘ dad offered it to me for a read, I figured I should give it a go. I had a rough idea what it was about, due to the amount of hype the book had generated, and still found the winding plot quite compelling despite spoilers I’d stumbled across on the web.

However, as compelling as the story is, the characters are as stereotypical as they come, with your chiselled, handsome american hero, your beauty with a brain at his side, pompous police chief, and a pip-pip, jolly hockey sticks english aristocrat thrown in for good measure. Considering the amount of research that has gone into the rest of the book, the one dimensional character development is piss poor to say the least, and something that surprised me considering the media attention the book has enjoyed.

Brown seems to suffer from that 24 season one issue, whereby all the characters he wants you to think are bad, well, they’re portrayed as shifty and unscrupulous. And all the characters he wants you to think are the good guys, they come across as whiter than white. It fails miserably on all counts, as the lack of subtlety sets alarm bells ringing almost right away. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the overly shifty, must-be-involved-with-the-bad-guys police chief is so obviously going to be clean as a whistle when it’s all said and done. The same and opposite is true of the too good to be true, overly helpful character, to the point where I ended up just coasting through the story wondering when the “good guy” was going to finally fuck them all over.

Still, maybe if you can spin a good yarn then it doesn’t really matter if all your characters are flat? And I do feel slightly harsh in pouring scorn on someone with immeasurably more writing talent than myself. I mean, the story contains some captivating, foreboding material that seems quite probable in some cases, keeping the intrigue and pulling you back for more.
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