Book review: Travels With My Chicken

Note: Today marks the first of what I hope will be many guest reviews of travel books here at Vagablogging.net. My first guest reviewer is Bill Jenkins, a world traveler, semi-retired social studies teacher, and regular columnist with the alternative weekly F5 Wichita. He is reviewing Martin Gurdon’s Travels with My Chicken : A Man and His Companion Take to the Road (Lyons Press, 176 pages), which was released this month.

Toward the end of Travels With My Chicken, Martin Gurdon says, “The whole thing has been a blast. No other reason was needed. I drank some lukewarm tea and felt happy.” If a lukewarm cup of tea can make you happy, Travels With My Chicken is the book for you. Gurdon admits that the book was suggested by his agent to capitalize on the book tour on which he promoted his previous book, Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance. Hopefully that book was more satisfying.

Travels With My Chicken disappoints on a couple levels. If you were looking for a travel book, this does not fit the bill. Gurdon just loads the chicken into a rental car and heads out for a few days to sign copies of his earlier book at B&B’s that he found on the Internet, and goes home. If you were looking for a buddy story between a man and his chicken, you will be disappointed as well. It is not the story of a relationship between a man and his pet chicken. Indeed, he just picks one or another his seven chickens to take to these book signings. By my count, at least three different chickens went out for a few days, depending on which was calmer and more adaptable that week. None of the chickens seemed to have a distinct personality or to form a close bond with its owner.

So where does that leave the book? As cozy as a lukewarm cup of tea. Not that Gordon is not a mildly amusing storyteller. He reminds one of an old friend or relative who has been told that he can really tell a story and to whom you listen politely, hoping in vain for some gem of wisdom or at least a sharp chuckle. Bill Bryson or Garrison Keillor he is not. There were no passages to read aloud to a close companion, no clever phrases to copy into one’s handy reader’s journal, no bon mot to throw into conversation. Nothing a writer would care to steal.

I feel bad savaging this book. Martin Gurdon has done nothing to me. Unfortunately, he has done nothing for me either. There is none of the illumination of place that makes good travel writing. None of the characters is memorable (well, many of them are chickens — but they, too, run together). Nothing beyond a pleasant afternoon’s reading, contented in the company of the old relative and a cup of lukewarm tea.