This was an interesting book for a few reasons, the least of which is that it *literally * fell apart in my hands–every single page came apart as I turned it, leaving me with a curious sort of folio of pages once I finished it. In that sense, the book (purchased second hand on eBay, and therefore possessed of a sort of tacky, damp history) felt akin to how most of this narrative felt: hanging on by a wish and thread and a bit of luck that it’s not very long.
That’s slightly underselling it, too, because end of day I did enjoy this curious book, picked out as the book to read for a book club that’s situated on an honest-to-god houseboat (book barge, as it were), unlike our Nancy Campbell, Poet Laureate of the Canals, who actually chooses to live in a campervan/caravan next to but not on the river. Having just lived through a single day of Andy’s stay in a narrowboat on the river (hi, Good Material!) I don’t entirely understand Campbell’s desire to move into such a situation, but as noted there’s not really many other options awaiting a professional author with £750 or so in her bank account.
The funniest part of this book is how passionately I started defending it when the other attendees at the book club (to which I was, in fact, a new member) disliked it. I didn’t particularly like Campbell–I found her lack of self-sufficiency rather appaling in a woman her age–but boy did I want to defend her right to be self-centered and self-absorbed and write an entire book about a handful of months she spent in a van in the midst of COVID. So what? If that premise doesn’t work for you then you don’t need to read it. Or if you do, because it’s for a a book club and you like the other members, you can read it in the spirit it was written! I suppose it’s a new year and I’m not looking for a run of negativity in this the year 2025.
Your enjoyment of this book is likely to come down to your patience with someone’s extended diatribes down what could charitably be called Wikipedia rabbit holes, but well written and clearly brimming with curiosity. And as someone who has never met a fun fact or bit of context she didn’t want to pepper into her everyday conversations, I found myself very simpatico with Campbell.