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Book Review: Are We There Yet by Ben Hatch
Book title: Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra
Format: Kindle (also available in paperback)
Pages: 353
Price: £1.99
"‘Hurry up,’ I shout at Dinah, whilst on the overhead telly Ray Mears’ Survival is playing extraordinarily loudly because Charlie sat on the volume button of the remote. The kids writhe about in the V05 shampoo they just spilt, laughing as the last of their clean clothes bite the dust, and I’m thinking: ‘Survive driving round England with two under 4s, staying at a different hotel each night and visiting four or five attractions a day and sometimes a restaurant in the evening. Sleep all in the same room, go to bed at 7 p.m. after having had no evening to yourself, wake up at 7 a.m. and do it all again the next day with the prospect of another 140 nights of the same – then come and tell me about survival in your khaki ****ing shorts, Ray.’"
They were bored, broke, burned out and turning 40. So when Ben and his wife Dinah were approached to write a guidebook about family travel, they embraced the open road, ignoring friends’ warnings: 'One of you will come back chopped up in a bin bag in the roof box.'
Featuring deadly puff adders, Billie Piper’s pyjamas and a friend of Hitler’s, it’s a story about love, death, falling out, moving on and growing up, and 8,000 misguided miles in a Vauxhall Astra.
Review:
Initially the thought of reading yet another book about middle-class parents dragging their precocious brood around the UK, in order to create fond memories, filled me with dread.
However, it didn't take long for my mind to quickly change. A few pages in, reading an excerpt on the Daily Mail website, it was clear to me this was not going to be typical guidebook narrative of we went there, saw that and had fun. Far from the amusing excerpt introduced me to the Hatch Family, a family I was fast warming to. I was hooked, I booted up my Kindle and downloaded the full book.
Why? Well, here is a family that from the off, refused to take themselves seriously, and didn't care who knew it. Their children, yes cute sounding, are far from perfect, and despite working to a schedule (for the travel book Ben was Hatch was writing), their best laid plans were often unavoidably changed. And yes, I often laughed at their misfortunes.
Take the case of the car crash, while taking their youngest to hospital, during the time that Ben and his wife tried to get a listless Charlie to the hospital, the couple held tense conversations about their future, whether to go home so early in the journey, or use up their meagre funds on a hire car, thankfully they stayed on.
Then there was the case when Ben, accused of "always thinking he has appendicitis", forces a toothbrush tip up his bottom to move his poo along, only to end up in hospital diagnosed with a kidney stone.
While the family's many trial, tribulations and squabbles were written in such an amusing and entertaining tone that I felt I was in the back seat with them.
But what really engaged me is the thread that runs alongside the travel guide, that of the relationship between Ben and his dying father. The story of this choppy and emotional relationship, moved and gripped me so much that I couldn't but the book down, finishing it in under a week.
In summary, if you are looking for a travel book to guide you around family-friendly Britain, this is not it. What this is, is an often amusing, emotional and gripping story about family and relationships; that of Ben, his wife and children, with his brother, sister and step-mother, but most of all the story of Ben's relationship with his father.
This is my kind of travel book, so I say more please Mr Hatch!
Rating: 4/5
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