A Tall Man in a Low Land

Author(s): Harry Pearson

Location(s): Belgium

Genre(s): Travelogue

Era(s): 2000s

Location

Content

Belgium has had its share of defining moments: the treaty of Vienna after Napoleon, two world wars and, rounding out the 20th century, contaminated Coke come to mind. In A Tall Man in a Low Land the curmudgeonly comic Harry Pearson grabs this theme in his teeth and, growling through the lowlands, asks “what the bloody hell am I doing here?” Along the way, Pearson bumps into some curiously sympathetic observers, the Belgians themselves. His meandering path of puns and one-liners describes the land of the Flemish and the French Walloons: two worlds for the price of one.
Pearson wisely skirts Brussels, the home of the 17th-century statue of the Manneken-Pis, Belgium’s unfortunate guidebook equivalent to Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. Instead he heads into the countryside, taking a poke at sights no guide would have the guts to mention: the life-threatening preoccupation with electrical DIY projects and a Flemish landscape of garden ornaments littering every nook and cranny. Such observations are fuelled by Pearson’s ability to deliver detail with a punch line though he doesn’t approach Bill Bryson’s story-telling ease.

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