Book Review

Not a Bad Ride: Stories from a Boomer's Life on the Edge by Eric J. Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Quite simply, this is the best book I’ve read in ages.

I’d come across Eric Smith’s writing before, mostly his flash fiction, and so I was attracted to this, his… “memoir”, I suppose you might describe it. Written as a series of vignettes, the author covers the various phases of his life, with special attention to the period from adolescence through until around forty.

Smith’s writing can only be described as “evocative” – evocative of a mid-west US that probably only exists in my imagination, but nevertheless seems very real all the same. His skill is to make the ordinary seem extraordinary in much the same manner as Alan Bennett and, before him, Joyce Grenfell have done in the UK. The characters are real, the author is real. He doesn’t attempt to paint himself as some sort of hero, or a tortured soul. He’s just ordinary, albeit a little above ordinary in some aspects of his life – he runs, and he writes for a living, although not in a literary sense. But that writing craft shines through; I’ve seen it before, the professional writer – albeit of catalogues, or proposals, or reports – is able to turn those skills to quality literature as a sideline. Much of it is achieved with a turn of phrase; a woman of thirty-six is described as “rode-hard-and-put-away-wet”, for instance. I’d read one or two of these stories elsewhere before and assumed they were fiction, now I realise they weren’t. Because he’s become interested in flash fiction since retiring, the author includes a few examples at the end, but this is an autobiography at heart.

One might say that Eric Smith’s capture of the mid-west voice is all the more remarkable because he isn’t really a mid-westerner at all, but it transpires that he was born in Canada, and there’s perhaps a Canadian accent in that quiet narrative. This is not a book where exclamation marks are to be found; stories tend to end quietly, with a gentle, meditative sentence for the most part. I’ve no idea what the author sounds like, but the reader can imagine. Read the book and you’ll see what I mean.

Because the book consists of these vignettes, it makes for great breakfast-table or bedtime reading – this isn’t a huge tome with which to immerse yourself on a holiday. You can even read his book and something else at the same time – it works fine.

I’ve heard a whisper that Eric Smith is working on a novel. That would be something.

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