Reading: Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America

October 23 2010 , Written by thediversetraveller Published on #Jenny Diski, #Recommendations & Rants (tips, links and reviews), #stranger on a train, #train, #travel, #traveling, #travelling, #USA, #women travelers, #women travellers, #women writers

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; New edition (15 Jan 2004)
Price: £6.99
Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America

"We were on a train, out of the way of our lives, any of us could tell anything we liked. We were, for the time being, just the story we told." Jenny Diski

Book blurb:

In spite of the fact that her idea of travel is to stay at home with the phone of the hook, Jenny Diski takes a trip around the perimeter of the USA by train.

Somewhat reluctantly she meets all kinds of characters bursting with stories to tell, and finds herself brooding about the marvellously familiar landscape of America, half known already through film and television.

Like the pulse of the train over the rails, the theme of the dying pleasure of smoking thrums through the book, along with reflections on the condition of solitude, and the nature of friendship and memories triggered by her past time in psychiatric hospitals.

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