First off I really enjoyed this book. As others have noted the writing, the description of places an people, reflected a high command of English (and a few other languages*), and his impressive palette of appropriate passages from great works of literature was something. Perhaps though sometimes leaving me to wonder if it was all a true reflection of reality at the time or maybe there was more than a little of the way he now (at the time the book was written) remembered it, or the way he would have liked it to be. The book after all was written in 1977 about experiences in 1933-1934, and I definitely feel that in the intervening decades a rose-colored patina had developed over it all.

I also loved the style of writing. I felt that I was simultaneously receiving a recounting of a youthful travel across Central Europe from Holland to the Balkans (if at times fanciful), a history lesson, a education in literature that was in anyway pertinent, and a look at a world that is now gone forever. I have to say though that reflecting on the book-of-the-month for the other club—On the Trail of Genghis Khan—that A Time of Gifts was the more enjoyable read, certainly reflected superior writing, and is a book I will probably want to read again. On the other hand I feel that On the Trail of Genghis Khan gave me a more accurate picture of the actual reality of the people and places of the time.


This book also left me with a deep feeling of nostalgia, but for a time I could never have experienced. The instances of reliance on the kindness of strangers that would not fly today abound. Drinking oneself unconscious in a bar and the result being the owner carrying one up to a room to spend the night? Try being tossed into the street, perhaps after having first being rolled by some other barfly. Being able to sleep in a cell at the local police station? Only if under arrest. They might offer directions to the local homeless shelter, and you better be in line for a spot there by 3:00. The town mayor offering any visitor money for food and lodging? Get real. It was a time of gifts back then indeed.

One other comment on this. I do wonder if Fermor's experience would have been the same and would the idea of such a journey have been possible even back then for a working class English youth? Would the father of an old school friend been willing, or even able, in 1933 to lend Fermor 15 pounds to get him started on his journey. Would his reception throughout Europe been the same as a wandering lower-class 18-year old with the corresponding level of education?


*Time have changed and certainly education has. It was a bit frustrating to encounter passages in Latin that of course were “all Greek” to me. That and many of his references to historical figures and events, as well as passages from classics, were unknown to me. I think that at sometime in the future I will have to slowly read this again with a computer handy to Google references and at least roughly translate passages in Latin and other languages.