Travels with my Aunt



I picked this book up when I while I was back in Chattanooga last month. I wanted to read something by Graham Green and I can't seem to get enough travel lately, so this book seemed perfect.

I have not quite finished it but feel ready to share some of my favorite passages. The synopsis:

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over fifty years at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon his dahlias and travel her way, Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay...through Aunt Augusta Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society; mixing with hippies, war criminals, CIA men; smoking pot, breaking all currency regulations...coming alive after a dull suburban lifetime.

I love Aunt Augusta's character. Everyone should have a relative like her. Wildly independent, quirky, adventurous. She speaks so matter-of-factly about things that should be shocking from a 70yr old woman that you are convinced that hers is the only way to live.

When speaking of one of her many old lovers, she says "I have always preferred an occasional orgy to a nightly routine".

Another passage I liked:

Aunt Augusta: "You will be sorry one day that you refused to let me tell you the story I proposed"

"What story", I asked, thinking of my father.

"The story of Charles Pottifer, of course", my aunt said.

"Another time, Aunt Augusta."

"You are wrong to be so confident in the existence of another time," my aunt replied and called for the bill so loudly that the dog barked back at her from the bar.

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