Andrew Thompson (5) (1972–)

I can't write this review without potentially including spoilers. Sorry.

Andrew is an experienced international traveler. His girlfriend Lucy has a bit of travel experience too and they decide to embark on a 3 month journey across the USA in 2012 via bus, plane, taxi, and rental car. As most US citizens know it's not the middle class population that uses Greyhound so they meet some interesting people on their bus adventures. Also bus stations are not usually in the best neighborhoods in US cities so yeah, they see some interesting people.

The two of them also aren't used to spending so much time together so a stressful 3-month trip together stresses them to some limits.

Andrew doesn't tell the story in chronological order so I got confused at the beginning of almost every chapter because it wasn't a continuation of the chapter before. A map would have been helpful, and going in order would have been helpful too.

His "candid" views of Americans are rather off but understandably so I guess given that he was viewing them from bus stations and cheap hotels. He definitely saw a larger percentage of "Mustang Men" than most Americans probably encounter. There are times when he describes scenes in painstaking detail. Do I need to know the names of every competitor on the eating contest he watched on tv? No. Do I need to know every competitor in the rodeo in Cody? No again. He's also got no right to complain about poor service when he doesn't tip. Whether he likes it or not many people in restaurants and hotels get paid less than the normal minimum wage because tips ARE their wages.

I wonder if his seemingly excessive drinking is what contributed to Lucy's desperation. Not that she was stone-cold sober herself, but it must have been rough traveling with Andrew being drunk all the time and acting like such a jerk. He obviously had control over their travel plans for the most part and she ended up feeling trapped in a strange country far from home. I certainly can't blame her for wanting to bail out more than once. I feel sorry for the woman, but I know she's moved on and now she has the memory of 45 states.

I think by the end of the book they have broken up. She hung in there for the full thing but just barely. At the end of the book Andrew is leaving England to go back to Australia (his native country). She's surprised I guess but it seems clear they are on different paths.… (mais)