The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

this book chokes me up. I seem to recall some rich times in my childhood, only I find it hard to think about my childhood because of the many violent episodes visited upon me by my hard-drinking parents. I guess I've spent the last 40 years forgetting the first ten. It literally hurts me to read of someone's normal and happy childhood. I finished the book today, came home and got drunk.. thanks mom and dad. In a way I wish I never read the book,..I have this irrational fantasy that everyone else got beat up all time by their drunk parents, and now it's going to take me awhile to get that back.
the book is finely written, though some of the gags were predictable and detracted from the reading. for example: burning the bald uncle's head with a magnifying glass,..c'mon. dropping peanut M&M's that shatter into a thousand shiny pieces,..I'm sure everyone else loves that stuff, but to me the "sight gags" mar the overall quality of the book. Still, 5 stars for an extraordinary reading experience.

I have to say that I love Bill Bryson's work. He never fails to make me laugh out loud. His work is funny, witty, smart, and he always seems to find the irony in life. I actually tend to get his audio books, because his stories seem best told orally. However, I did buy the paperback of his Thunderbolt Kid. This book did not fail me.

Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa during this time period I could relate to most of the places mentioned and the book had me lauging harder than I have in years. It is the first book I've actually enjoyed enough to finish in years.

Bill Bryson's first book "The Lost Continent" starts with the line "I came from Des Moines, Iowa. Somebody had to." We now get the slightly exaggerated childhood and adolescence of Bill Bryson, aka The Thunderbolt Kid (in his own mind anyway) in Des Moines in the 1950s, when life in the USA for the average person was at its very best and unequalled anywhere else. Mr. Bryson presents an affectionate picture of the now-disappeared small(ish)-town America in the pre-McDonald's era, before Everywhere became like Everywhere Else.


I confess that I am a sucker for his droll style and keen sense of observation - he seems to have a talent for making the ordinary wryly amusing and even laugh-out-loud funny. I can understand why other people wouldn't find this book as thoroughly enjoyable as some of his other stuff. I'm not one of those.

This is Bryson at his best, funny, fearless, and factual. He took me back to splendid promise of the 50's when we awaited "Better things through chemistry" and believed they would come.