Narrow Dog to Carcassonne


Posted on Apr 2, 2008
By Melissa Holbrook Pierson

by Terry Darlington

Delta Trade Paperbacks, 325 pages, $13

If it is a foolhardy notion to sail a narrowboat - made for going down shallow and waveless canals - across the perilous English Channel, then what is it to sail one across the channel with a Whippet aboard?

Apparently, a capital idea, so long as the result is an account of the journey that is as hilariously, brilliantly written as this one. Terry Darlington and his wife, Monica, are crazy in a good way, the way that makes you say "What the heck?" to an adventurous idea. But that's before you find out exactly what the heck.

The Greek chorus to many scenes of bizarre behavior and national character and inadvertent humor as they traverse 240 miles of canal from Stone to London, then venture across a body of water not made for them, only to arrive in the even stranger lands of Francophone Europe, is Jim, their lovely Whippet. He too was not made for the life he is living. As his owner writes of the breed: "A whippet running as hard as he can is fast indeed - sometimes he goes through a door only he can see and comes out somewhere else."

The basic absurdity of almost every minute of their days is beautifully captured by Darlington, who displays the trademark mordant wit that is a British trait:

      After enough paperwork to tie Britain into the Single European
      Currency the fuel barge filled our tanks. The pilot came up from
      the engine-room rubbing his eyes. Where is Jim? I asked. He's
      hiding in a drawer, said the pilot - he has eaten the marmalade
      and one of your socks. Monica and I and the pilot arranged
      ourselves on the back counter.

There's a nonpareil combination of sometimes shocking earthiness and soaring intellect at work here, and sheer joy in every sentence. Sometimes it attains the heights of poetry, but only because the author is not particularly trying to.

You don't want the journey, and thus the book, to come to an end. That's why it's good news that the Darlingtons are currently tackling the American Intracoastal Waterway. Good news for us, that is, but bad news for Jim, whose bio says he "hates boating." He loves visiting pubs along the way, though, where he usually gets a packet of crisps and a belly rub. And we love watching him, no matter what it is he's doing. Even floating. 
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