..the Irish, and them that wish they were. So goes the old Irish boast. Reading about Ginger Coffey, the spirit of that saying is captured splendidly. He's a new immigrant to Canada, with a wife and daughter, and like many a new immigrant, he has trouble finding work and earning enough money to support a family. This leads to marital problems, and eventually separation. But through all the hardships Ginger faces, he never loses his will to live. He always has a plan, and rather than let himself become despondent over his prospects, he drives away his pessimism and dreams of tomorrows full of opportunities. Although he eventually reconciles himself to the fact that he's "not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be," (as a certain Great Poet would say), that isn't to say he becomes bitter or loses hope. Like Ginger puts it, "Life [is] the victory, isn't it?"

This book has moments both happy and sad, some terribly poignant, despite the very ordinary subject matter- or maybe because of it (?). Nothing too cerebral, but a grand story with themes the average person can relate to.

This book is a great book. It is written differently which is very good. As I read I seemed to flow with it and I felt everthing that the character Ginger Coffey felt. Each time something new came up, or another problem arised, you felt for the character, but you knew it would be ok. Summary: very interesting, easy to understand, and factual about immigrating

I truly love this book. In it, Brian Moore explores one man's heroic attempt to shift position in the world. Ginger Coffey leaves the unpromising economic situation in Dublin Ireland to pursue his idea of the Great Canadian Dream. With wife and daughter in tow, he arrives in Montreal in the dead of winter with $15.03 to his name. He has been waiting a long time for this golden opportunity. It soon becomes apparent however, that Canada was not as eagerly waiting for him!

He manages to land a job at The Tribune, but rather than his desired position as journalist, he wallows among the other galley slaves as a lowly proofreader. They collectively suffer under an exploitative and humiliating boss, MacGregor. Because of his radical Irish optimism, Coffey is blind to the emptiness of the editor's promise to promote him to journalist "one day soon". Before that mysterious day which never arrives, Coffey is further forced to augment his meager wages by accepting a job as a diaper delivery man for a company called TINY-ONES. Is this the Utopia that he crossed an ocean for? Utopia-shmopia! But while his Great Canadian Dream is shattering he hears some trans-Atlantic gossip that suggests the situation back in Ireland is even worse! So his choice of Montreal is now an irrevocable one, if for no other reason than it at least affords him some anonymity until he hits the big time. But even this anonymity is brutalized one day when he encounters an old Dublin girlfriend while he is in the full garb of his TINY-ONES uniform. This is only one of a series of humiliations that Coffey experiences, not the least of which is the fact that his marriage is threatened, and he fears that his wife Vera is involved with an associate of his. His fears are correct... her involvement with the successful journalist Gerry Grosvenor amounts to a sort of clandestine infidelity, but unknown to Ginger, it has not been adulterous. At any rate, soon they are poised for a divorce. But the coup de grace in Ginger's bad luck comes one cold winter night as he stumbles out of a bar after drinking far too much of a mixture of wine and Coca-Cola. While waiting for the bus, he feels the need to unburden his bladder somewhat, and (thinking that he was up against an unoccupied office building) relieves himself in the doorway of one of the biggest hotels in the city! He is arrested for indecent exposure and has his (hilarious) day in court. In this case, the luck of the Irish turns out to be a six-month suspended sentence.

It looks like things could get no worse. Coffey returns home to gather up his things and leave his family. But amazingly, his final courtroom incident has led to some genuine "luck" in the life of Ginger Coffey. A great final chapter shows us the joy that comes from true forgiveness and reconciliation. Ginger Coffey must resign himself to the fact that some very simple things in life (the renewed love of his wife, the steadfast love of his daughter) are like the consolation prizes in his uphill run through life. In the end he celebrates the retention of roughly no more than what he arrived with in Canada... his original $15.03. But, along with that fortune, he now has a new understanding of what makes life important.

This was Moore's first novel with a Canadian setting, published in 1960 after the Irish-born author himself had spent twelve years living in Canada. He was personally familiar with what it is like to be an immigrant emerging from Montreal's Dorchester Street bus terminal into the same sort of frozen slush, snow and gloom that Ginger Coffey experienced. And Moore's interest in this novel seems to be an investigation into the ways in which public myths (the Great Canadian Dream) reflect and encourage private fantasies (I'm going to get rich when I get there). Coffey's conclusion was that "life was the victory... going on was the victory." That the true challenge and test in life resides in the private domain, in intimate relationships. It is for this reason that the central drama of the story, which is intertwined with Ginger's search for wealth and public recognition in the New World, is the collapse of his marriage to Vera. Moore deals with these serious themes in a novel that is very light to read and even "comic" at most points. Ginger Coffey is an unforgettable character... the quintessential well-intentioned optimist/dreamer.

This book tries hard to be poignant, but doesn't make it. Much too depressing, and not entertaining enough.

A collection of travel writing, mainly excerpts from longer works, although a few are short essays, describing those trips that--well, did not seem quite so fun at the time, but make for great reading. I read this book as a primer and introduction to the writers therein, some of whom I plan to seek out later, including:

* Stuart Stevens--Reads like Mark Salzman, probably in part due to the fact that he traveled with Salzman.
* P. K. Page--Her bit on Australia was great--exactly the problems with another culture that I'm looking for.
* Norman Lewis--His Golden Earth is considered a classic of travel writing and this excerpt was enough to show some of the reasons why.
* Colin Thubron--He traveled in the USSR before the break-up. There will probably be a spate of books about the USSR now that it's easier to travel there, so this should be a fine slice of something not to be seen again, like Tibet before the Chinese takeover.
* Paul Theroux--People had already recommended Theroux to me, and this except was a confirmation.
* Mary Morris--A woman traveling alone has increased risk, and implicit bravery. This particular woman is a good writer, as well.
* Charles Nicholl--More like a one-man "60 Minutes" team--the excerpt from his investigation on the cocaine underworld of Columbia just whetted my appetite for more.
* Jonathan Raban--Sometimes our own country is the most foreign of places. Raban's trip down the Mississippi looks good.

* Gavin Young--War reportage, neither sentimental nor brusque, just frighteningly real.
* Graham Greene--I've never read any Greene until this, and given this, and his reputation, I plan to correct that.
* Eric Hansen--More Borneo, this time on foot rather than O'Hanlon's river journey. Borneo's a strange place.
* Michael Asher--This is Arabia--another bit of difficult terrain.

This anthology's title is off by one letter: it should be called Sad Trips, not Bad Trips. The phrase 'bad trips' (and especially the book's front cover description: "A sometimes terrifying, sometimes hilarious collection of writing on the perils of the road") suggests to me the journeys that are hell to live through but fun to look back on, like, say, the time I spent three days trapped in the Boise, Idaho airport with what seemed to be the entire population of the state of Idaho. Those are the kinds of stories I expected from this anthology.

But in Bad Trips, the editor gives us a few funny stories along with tales alternately grim, gruesome, and depressing beyond all description. Just a few examples of the topics covered: a walk through a refugee village full of starving children, the torture, death, and dismemberment of civilians in El Salvador, the city of Hue shortly after it was destroyed by the Vietcong and American armies. These are important tales, and they need to be told, but they seem somewhat inappropriate for a book purporting to be a light-hearted, funny, travel anthology.

The editor made a few other strange decisions in assembling this collection, and while one works, most don't. I laud his attempt to include the work of some great writers, and this pays off: the selections by David Mamet, Anita Desai, Martin Amis, and John Updike are wonderful, and there's a poem by Al Purdy that every off-the-beaten-track traveler should read. But the book also includes a number of extracts from works of fiction, which jars - part of the joy of travel stories is that they're *true*.

Overall, the strength of some of the individual selections doesn't make up for the strange choices the editor has made. Look for it used, or check it out of the library.