The Broken Road

January 15, 2014
A posthumous completion of an adventure British author and adventurer Fermor (1915-2011) began more than 70 years ago: a walk from Holland to Istanbul. In 1933, then 18, "Paddy" Fermor--the subject of co-editor Artemis Cooper's biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (2013)--set out on that long trek. As he recounted in A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), both written half a century later, he encountered all sorts of people, not least of them the Nazis and nationalists who would soon set Europe aflame, whereupon Fermor began a guerrilla life that James Bond would have envied. When he died, he left behind bits and pieces of this closing volume. Why he never completed it is a mystery; as Cooper and co-editor Colin Thubron observe, "The problem remained obscure even to him, and The Broken Road is only its partial resolution." On reading it, one wishes that Fermor, a fluent and supremely literate writer, had spent more time in closure; the book seems a touch unfinished and not quite up to its predecessors. Even so, he is in fine form as he travels from the Iron Gates of Bulgaria toward his destination, meeting a succession of beguiling women and, as ever, being in the right place at the right time. As readers will learn, the title of the book is just right; and if Fermor encountered endless obstacles as well, his enthusiasm for description and discovery remain undiminished, as he recounts the ethnographic and historical details of life in the Balkans: "When their crust of frowning aloofness is broken, and their guard down and the maddening banter lulled, they are often spontaneous, enthusiastic and--despite the opposite intention--extremely naive and transparently innocent"; "Brandy in large quantities pumped in a fresh impetus, which was hardly needed by this time, and we danced and sang." Incomplete but lovely nonetheless. Admirers of Fermor's writing will not be disappointed.

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Starred review from February 1, 2014
Reading classic travel writer Fermor's body of work reinforces the conviction that a beautiful style is nearly requisite in travel writing to combine immediacy and resonance. Fermor (19152011) primarily made his name with two companion books, A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and Water (1998), which chronicled his walk across Europe as a teenager in 1933 and 1934. A third volume, to complete an intended trilogy, did not see publication during his lifetime. Now, his literary executors (one of whom, Artemis Cooper, is the author of the recent and defining Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, 2013) have prepared the manuscripts he intended to use for the third volumeand thus the trilogy is complete. The notably handsome and inexhaustibly curious Englishman walks, on this final portion of his trek, through Bulgaria and Romania. Being on foot, he naturally experiences the landscape and the locals on an especially intimate level. As history has spilled heavily over these two countries since the time of the Ottoman Turks, history is woven into Fermor's enlightening account. People, customs, and geography are what good travel writers seek and share, Fermor foremost among them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)