Review: Thoroughly enjoyable and very real
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 16, 2013
Being a boat person too, but based in the Netherlands, I am always curious to read books and blogs about Narrowboating life in England. I really enjoyed Marie Browne's account of how she and her husband by a run down NB, travel as total novices to their mooring in cambridgeshire, re-furbish the the boat themselves and learn to love the life of  water rats. I was hooked from the first page and found it funny, touching, honest and very true to my own experiences of boat conversion - everything takes at least three times longer than you think it will! If I have any criticism at all, it's that in the first half of the book, there's a bit too much detail about what she does to keep Sam entertained. This gets less when their daughter joins them, but it wouldn't have hurt to cut out some of the trivia. I also (personally) didn't like some of the expletives that come into the dialogue and are clearly very true to life but seem a little out of place in what is otherwise really good writing. It would have had a five from me otherwise as the rest is brilliant.