At Home / Bill Bryson

Prompted by the discovery of a small door leading from the attic out to a tiny platform utterly invisible from the ground, Bill Bryson uses the layout and history of his house, a rectory built in 1851, to muse on the structure and concept we call "home." This is not so much a short history of private life (as the subtitle would have us believe), but a short history of the domestic space. Bryson takes us on a tour of the home, focusing on each element in turn (hall, kitchen, scullery, fusebox, drawing room, dining room, cellar, passage, study, garden, stairs, bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, nursery...) to conclude, fittingly, in the attic, always bringing it back to his house and its original owner, the Reverend Thomas Marsham. What emerges is the realization of how profoundly society has changed over the last 200 years.

Following at times circuitous routes, Bryson deftly and relevantly manages to touch just about every topic under the sun, from guano to arsenic and from archeology to clerics. His writing is erudite yet approachable, and he possesses a warmth and a contagious inquisitiveness that I found irresistible. Although some may find his rambling irritating, I enjoyed these tangents, since he's so eloquent and entertaining.

This was my first encounter with Bryson, and it completely charmed me. The audiobook, read by the author himself, was such a treat to listen to that I had to ration myself! I simply didn't want it to end.

I borrowed this audiobook from the Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec.

Rating: *****