Three Men in a Boat

5th July 2011

It was generally agreed that the story told in the book was quite "laddish". The 'pranks' of three young men in the late 1800s were comically told and made for relatively easy reading. It was noted that it is impossible to accurately provide a chronology to the story. There is a great deal of digression and many non sequiturs in the recounting of this journey down the Thames. The book suffers from the author's indecision regarding the genre of the book - whether it is a treatise on the British countryside, a comedy or a serious reflection on the mores of the period. Many of the reflections on the British countryside are maudlin and the social commentary is erratic and sits jarringly amidst the narrative. The characterisation of the three young men is poorly fleshed-out and the three merge seamlessly into a single person. Nonetheless, the book provides an insight into the period, albeit, from a very limited perspective.