French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour De France
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Comic writer Tim Moore trades his ailing Rolls Royce for a bicycle, a map and a water bottle in French Revolutions. This is a quest to pedal the route of the Tour de France, no mean feat for the fit, let alone a self-described suburban slouch. The resulting 2,256-haphazard-mile journey transforms Moore into an incredibly fit and passionately proud cyclist. Initially, Moore takes the "I will do it and it probably will kill me" approach. His normal perspective, as a stooge to life's misfortunes, plays well as he prepares to ride the route of the 2000 Tour de France. Moore is the everyman who pedalled in youth and now wouldn't ride a bike to the corner store. But unlike a traveller by car, train or plane, Moore has to navigate France under his own steam. Somewhere around the Ventoux, the world's windiest place, Moore starts to change. He becomes enraptured by the feat itself as mile by mile he realises he is no longer an accidental cyclist but a lean, mean cycling machine. Gradually, the narrative turns from travel to a personal quest. Along the route, Moore's details of the heroes of the Tour make an excellent primer on this gruelling race and helps the uninitiated understand the frenzy that grips France each July as the races meanders through incidental villages, over mountains and, finally, into Paris. It is worth reading for that alone. Having survived mountains of pain, a disgusting diet and motels of dubious value, a new, muscular Moore concludes that "I might never leave my mark on the Tour, but that didn't matter. It has left its mark on me". To follow Moore's path of perspiration is certainly not a vacation. Yet, this curmudgeonly clever and inspirational book makes one want to do just that. "Old Father Time was catching up with Old Father Tim. If I didn't do it this year, I wouldn't because maybe next year I couldn't," he says before starting out. And that, as Tim Moore so surely points out, is what pushes any true traveller out the door. --Kathleen Buckley
Daily Express, 23 June, 2001
The book's comic effect should not be underestimated: it is embarrassingly laugh-out-loud.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warning: do not read in public,
By A Customer
This review is from: French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France (Paperback)
As a keen cyclist (well, 50 miles a week) and a huge Tour de France fan, I was looking forward to this as a substitute for Channel 4's absent coverage of the race this year. What I didn't expect was that as well as being an informative, inspirational and - yes - moving account of a splendidly hopeless amateur's attempt to "do the Tour", French Revolutions would also turn out to be perhaps the funniest book I've ever read. My wife banned me from reading it in bed because I kept her awake with my helpless giggling, and reading it on a crowded train one morning was a BIG mistake.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
not the techy drivel I was expecting,
By A Customer
This review is from: French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France (Paperback)
Having run out of books on holiday i picked up my father's copy of 'French Revolutions'. I expected any book my dad owned to be heavily detailed on group sets and bottom brackets, and of little intest to the casual cyclist. How wrong was I. You don't need to know anything about the tour, the book is laugh out loud funny, unputdownable. The acheivement of any man who can ride this incredable race is hammered home, there is no sporting acheivement on earth like this one. However what really makes the book good is the way it draws in the reader, everyone's had the 5year old in the park experience of riding, but few can express it as hilariously as Tim Moore. The book is packed with dry humour and an author people can relate to, 'French Revolutions' has to be in my top ten of books. Go out - Buy it!
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining & comical, full of great anecdotes!,
By mailcaz@yahoo.co.uk (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France (Paperback)
This is one of the most entertaining books I've read in a long time. Moore gives an account of his journey around the Tour de France route in a most witty and comical way, his style is fresh and personal. I loved his interesting anecdotes and oddments of information about the Tour and its riders, it a is very humbling book to read as the author has such as obvious respect for the Tour riders and I can't help but totally agree. I am neither a Tour de France fanatic or a great cyclist but I still enjoyed this book immensely, and from now on shall be watching 'le tour' in a very different light. I can't recommend 'French Revolutions' enough.
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