In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose: Review

December 14, 2010

Ok, picture this. You’re on a cramped and to be blunt rather vile train heading into the gloriously busy London and to pass time you reach into your bag and pull out your copy of In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose by Nick Griffiths.

I am going to stop here to applaud you for two reasons:

Well done on choosing such a good book, I mean really well done, good effort.
Congratulations on prizing your elbows far enough away from your sides to open the book. That alone, on a cramped train, is quite the achievement (and whenever I see someone persist with this activity I congratulate them).

Hurray! You have your book successfully open and your mind can now transport you to the fantastically surreal world of Alexander Grey and Harrison Dextrose as they both embark on the exploration of a lifetime. I'm not going to say much about the plot, because I certainly can't do it justice. Suffice it to say, if you like the absurd and the unpredictable, you'll like this book. I, myself read this book whilst commuting and made the horrible mistake of forgetting that other people were also accompanying me on our journey through unknown tunnels. So I was pretty horrified when a snort escaped from my face whilst reading Nick Griffiths work of comic genius. Looking up (pretty stealthily, I thought) to check if my cool exterior had been crumpled by my snorting fit, I found my jolly companions were all tuned into their iPods/iPads/Kindles etc and staring glumly above my head at Flu Jab adverts. No-one had noticed, so my street cred was still intact, and actually, between you and me, I felt pretty liberated. In fact I loved it, I’m now a self-confessed ‘Laugh-out-loud commuter’ and it makes me pretty happy. I had a whale of a time reading In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose and I reckon you will too.

Go on, read it on a train and snort out loud if you want.

I dare you.