Journey to Java

A strong contender for the least interesting book I have competed, I must say I am surprised by the Travel book Club republishing this one. Journey to Java is half the story; the voyage back is the other half.

Harold Nicolson, a career diplomat and author, famously married to Vita Sackville-West, who accompanies him on this journey, is gifted a sum of money by friends on this 70th birthday and he decides to spend it on a cruise ship voyage to Java (Djakarta) and back. The Willem Ruys of the Rotterdam Loyd in early 1957.

Nicolson and Sackville-West are well known for their open marriage and multiple same sex relationships before and during the course of their marriage, but by 70 they appear to have calmed themselves to behave like normal elderly folk on a cruise ship. Well, sort of normal - they maintain separate rooms and bring with them their individual writing projects.

Despite a few day trips at the cruise liner stops (Canaries, South Africa, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Indonesia (Sumatra),Singapore, Indonesia (Djakarta)) they spend a week only in Jakarta and then re-board the same ship to return home. The book is a diarised record of the trip - when he breakfasted, when he swam, what books he read, conversations he had, mail he received, etc etc. Really, for me, this was a tedious read. There were a lot of philosophical and literary works that Nicolson read and a load of other books that I have not and very likely will never read, which he spent time analysing and wrote pages and pages about.

One of the great surprises for me was seeing other reviews where readers adored this book. How uninteresting life would be if we all enjoyed the same things!

For me, I can't go beyond 2 stars.