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BOOK REVIEW: Coast to Coast By Jan Morris Faber Faber, £9.99

BOOK REVIEW: Coast to CoastBy Jan Morris Faber Faber, £9.99

Jan Morris has said that her latest book, on the city of Trieste, will be her last, so we now have just her previous output to comb through – and what a canon of work it is.

It is not for nothing that a poll in the London Timesnamed her one of the 15 greatest British writers since the second World War.

This is a reissue of her first book, a trailblazing trip across the United States in the 1950s, a time when the US was the greatest superpower in the world, and was bursting with enthusiasm for its own ideals and materialistic magnificence.

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Morris’s account is both wry and breathless; her facility for the telling moment is a delight, be it portly gentlemen negotiating a narrow doorway in the UN headquarters or elegant descriptions of soaring roads carving their way through the American heartland (no, really).

It is extraordinary to think that this was Morris’s first book (though she had already cut her teeth as a journalist – indeed, an early scoop was travelling with the British expedition that conquered Everest in 1953).

As Morris notes in her brief introduction, this is a country that is very different to the one we know today, and the American dream was still brightly glinting in the Californian sunshine.

What is surprising, though, is how relevant and contemporary her descriptions still are. Thousands of writers have been to New York, but has any ever bettered Morris’s descriptions of the city’s streets in her opening chapter here? Reading it, you could be tempted into thinking the place hasn’t changed a bit in almost 60 years.

The truth, though, is that Morris’s gift for capturing the essence of a place and people is the constant at play.


lmackin@irishtimes.com