Lead Review (The Traveller’s Tales)
- Book: The Travellers’ Tales
- Location: Central Asia, Türkiye (Turkey)
- Author: Alastair Cairns Hull
Last year one of my top rated books was Overland by Yasmin Cordery Khan, which took the reader on a fictional trip from England, through Europe, Afghanistan, with final destination Kathmandu. I therefore was interested to read The Travellers’ Tales by Alastair Cairns Hull, which perhaps promised a similar adventure.
The Travellers’ Tales is a novel “based on the extensive travels by the author” back in the early 1970s and it is full of description and hook-ins to the era. The opening chapters are set in Istanbul where, of course, travellers used to pop into the Pudding Shop which was the quintessential stop off – a famed hippie hangout – for anyone trailing East to India and Kathmandu from England.
This is the story of Harry, who has travelled in a camper van to the city on the cusp of Europe and Asia with his chum Rolly. Once the former’s girlfriend, Lucy, turns up, Rolly decides to head back home, as life on the road, he discovers, is not for him. Warning tales of woe and danger that have beset travellers, coupled with a dreadful bout of sickness, have really put him off.
This autofiction relies heavily on description and plumps up the feel for the era by giving several of the characters a backstory and voice, which oftentimes feels irrelevant to the main thrust of the narrative. There are anecdotes and stories passed on by word of mouth between the travellers, which inform Harry’s journey going forward. Generally, when a novel is over-reliant simply on description, the absence of character development becomes particularly evident. The sense of place in this story is captured by simple means – mention of a street name or a visit to the Pudding Shop – but this isn’t sufficient to bring the colour of the setting to life: the sights, sounds and smells need to be evocatively captured in order to transport the reader and take them on a journey. The journey here is the road trip itself as the couple pick up hitchhikers and listen to their adventures and stories.
I checked that I had the final version and indeed it is. It is such a flat, meandering piece of prose and peppered with innumerable errors that are a discredit to the publisher. They pick up Jürgen (who throughout is Jurgen, this German really needs his Umlaut) and he quips that he is ‘the wrong cow” in his family (meaning black sheep, it is however the same in German, nothing to do with cows). Already on page 2 there is mention of a three-story building and in introduction to a new person – “..he was Chalky..” and 16 lines later “..he told us his name was Chalky“. There is mention of Thessalonica, which is now Thessaloniki and the former version went out of use in the early 20th Century so it doesn’t feel particularly era-correct for a novel set in the 1970s.
This kind of finished book is a real disservice to the self-publishing industry. It bothers me that a publishing house (specialising in self-published books) would take on an author, who can then choose their level of service and publisher input, and who can then ultimately opt to simply get their book published, without collaboratively addressing the core, problematical issues; this inevitably leads to a dismal and substandard product. (Surely there must be some kind of contract requirement to hone a text that is suitable for publication?). To cap it all, the novel is sent out to bloggers and reviewers in the hope of a positive review. It feels like a business model that isn’t really working and, in a case such as this, ultimately reflects poorly on both the author and the publisher. It actually feels a bit insulting as a reviewer that anyone would see fit to send out something in this dire state and expect someone to read it.
Every author really must do copy edits and get a proof reader/editor on board, and if the author chooses not to do this (or the publisher isn’t sufficiently persuasive), it is a wasted opportunity and a truly desultory and dispiriting experience for the reader.
Please wait...
