Hot Silver - Riding the Indian Pacific [Kindle Edition]

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, i definitely wasn't expecting it to be so funny. I read it in one sitting and found myself transported onto the train with Steven. His descriptions are so vivid you feel you're experiencing the journey with him; not always a comfortable read as you'll discover!

What a let-down. Not exactly a total disaster but a modest disappointment.

Not the book. That's fine. In fact Steven Lewis's book is more than fine for it made me laugh throughout at an author who had been rubbing his hands excitedly at the prospect of going on one of the great train journeys, a luxurious sortie across Australia. And who wouldn't be excited at such an opportunity, especially as it was a 'freebie'? Well, for a start not Mrs L who seemed to anticipate some drawbacks and arranged to accompany her husband only as far as Adelaide. Women have this uncanny sense of foreboding so they say.

So don't bother with this book if you don't love the thrilling adventure of train journeys and visiting remote hamlets which even the ghosts have left. Don't even pick it up if the notion of endless barren lands does not appeal. But read it most of all if you enjoy a laugh at the tongue-in-cheek discomfiture and disappointments of a really good travel writer. And I guess that he must have been able to comfort himself throughout the whole dismal business at the thought that he had a genuinely funny book just waiting to be written as soon as he escaped.

"Hot Silver" is a great title. The e-book cover is terrific and certainly influenced my decision to buy it. This is not really an e-book, however, being very short; it's an extended article written by an experienced journalist. Not surprisingly, it is well written. There is none of the careless editing that mars some e-books; the sentences flow well and carry the reader along. Top marks for delivery. My reservations are to do with the content.

An editor commissioning an article based on this journey would want a particular bias for the magazine or paper: a focus on Australian history, perhaps, or an account of the landscape and its flora and fauna. These elements are included in "Hot Silver" but don't predominate. The brief might be for a human interest story, with interviews of railway staff and people met at the different calling points. There is little indeed of that. Only if the writer was himself well-known would a highly personal focus seem appropriate. Launching an e-book independently allows the writer to decide on the approach.

Unfortunately Lewis has made the book an account of his personal discomfort and discomfiture. The trip does sound uncomfortable, particularly compared with his (and my) fantasies of Orient Express luxury. But the most striking feature is his recoil from his fellow-passengers on grounds of age. Is his own daily life confined to people around forty? If he believes generations are better kept apart, what future is there for him as his children become adult? He writes of the Hospitality Assistants working for passengers "old enough to be their grandparents". So? The picture that builds over the course of the journey across Australia is of a man who cannot interact with anyone who does not fit the profile of his own social set. Apart from the disagreeable Bede, we are given no evidence of hostility towards him. He refers to the "easy rapport" of the three women who share his lunch table - a rapport which he "tries to fake". "I feel callow", he confesses, and spends much of the trip, hermit-like, in his compartment. This attitude sits very strangely beside the solidarity he claims with the working man (in the Epilogue) or his concern for the aboriginal victims of nuclear testing in Maralinga.

If, indeed, an editor had been waiting for the MS, Lewis would have been obliged to go ahead with his planned visit to Perth. His journey would have begun and ended with vibrant city life, framing and contrasting with the empty miles across the Australian interior.

As it is, the story just fizzles out.