Review: I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

"I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is one of the few, if not the only,
books I have bought spontaneously based on the recommendation of the
artificially intelligent but market-savvy brain that runs Amazon.com
and its Japanese-speaking twin Amazon.co.jp.

In the tag line, "An American returns home after twenty years in
England", I recognized an alter ego. I ordered the book hoping to
learn about the trials and tribulations of a long-expatriate's return
to his home country, a path I have not yet seriously considered for
myself, but the idea of which I must admit bubbles up from deep in
the back of my mind from time to time.

The book is an enjoyable read. One of the inside blurbs compares
Bryson's writing to Dave Berry's, and I think that's a fair
comparison, though I haven't read that much Berry. Bryson's style is
light but intelligent, and self-deprecatingly witty.

However, although I enjoyed reading "Stranger" and can recommend it
to anyone interested in a humorous look at American culture, I
completed the book with a slight feeling of disappointment.

First is that the book is a little too light. Maybe it's because the
US and the UK are culturally much more similar than most people
assume, but although Bryson had a fair number of trials, he reports
no tribulations. For me, a move back to America from Japan after 20+
years would be a major dislocation and my personal identity. I would
have appreciated Bryson sharing some of his truly painful experiences
instead of just the merely embarrassing.

Another problem is the focus of Bryson's observations. I had hoped
for an insightful contrast of US and British culture. I got some of
that, but most of Bryson's observations seem motivated by nostalgia
for the America of his childhood rather than for his adopted second
country. Also, the "new" America Bryson is coming home to is about
the same America that I left to come to Japan, which takes away from
the shock.

The last element of my disappointment is not in the book itself, but
something I learned about Bryson in Wikipedia. Less than five years
after he published "Stranger", it seems that Bryson and his family
relocated back to England. I'm not questioning his loyalty. If he's
like me, loyalty is a complicated question. But I feel slightly
betrayed in that Bryson set out to write "Stranger" as a chalenge to
Robert Frost's chestnut, "You can't go home again", but by his
actions admits that Frost was right after all.