The Purple Land

What a cracking adventure story this was, it really brought out the child in me. I can see that when this book came out it could have inspired young men to leave the safety of home to travel across the ocean, to fight in revolutions, to meet beautiful young ladies and to eat, drink and be merry.

Our main character is Richard Lamb, he is travelling and looking for work and he has left his wife at home. He is a very passionate young man, falling in love with every pretty girl he meets, this passion soon gets him in hot water and he finds himself embroiled in a revolution, it is quite comical to read as he is charging towards the enemy, gun at the ready and not being sure what is going on. At the start of the journey he is quite British, not impressed with Uruguay and it's dirty lowly people, as the journey progresses and he meets more and more kind and wise people he starts to fall in love with the country and freely admits that his first impressions were way off the mark. This change in character, that almost happens without the reader realising it, shows just how good the writing is, very impressive for a debut.

This has been a very enjoyable read, I've met some great people and if everybody in the world had this friendly outlook (treat every visitor as if they were a member of your family) then it would be a far better place to live.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2019/12/24/the-purple-land-by-w-h-hudson/