Book: Three men in a boat

Author: Jerome K. Jerome
# of pages: 185
Year of first publication: 1889
This edition published in: 1975 by Penguin

Genre:
This is a humorous novel.

Setting:
The story takes place in:
No exact date is given. But the story is told after it has happened and at least six years (George hadn?t gone boating for six years after the trip, so it must be at least six years later). This makes it about 1880, or a few years earlier. The time span is about ten days.

The action takes place in:
-London, in the house of J.
-On the river Thames and the surrounding villages and towns, on islands in the river, in bars and restaurants, on the road, in locks, in the boat, on the towing paths and in the house of a kind woman where they spend the night.

Subject/Theme:
Themes:
Boating, sailing, fishing, human characteristics, dogs (especially fox-terriers), rowing and pulling.

Subject:
A boat trip.

Characters:
J.:
A middle aged or elderly man with liver-problems. He is terribly lazy but thinks and says he?s not lazy at all but does all the hard work. He is also very contradictive. When they?re in the way of a steam-roller he is mad at the steam-roller and says they?re no good. But a while later when HE is being pulled by a steam-roller and that roller has to stop for smaller boats he is mad at the boats for being in the way.

George:
A middle aged or elderly man suffering from fits of giddiness. He tells the other that he is a great boatsman, but he turns out to be a liar. His work at the bank is, according to his boatmates, a lousy and easy job.

Harris:
Here is the laziest of the three, complaining about everything. His intelligence is also a bit hard to find (thinking that turning right at every turn in a maze will help you to come out of it).

Montmorency:
The fox-terrier, owned by J.. An aggressive dog, attacking any other creature in sight.

Point of View:
The story is told in the first person. The writer is J.. It is told after it has happened.

Summary:
The three men decide one evening that they should go on a boat trip, to improve their health and clear their minds. Two days later Harris and J. and Montmorency leave London in a boat. George has to work that day and will come to a lock on the route which H. and J. are going to follow.

As they arrive at the lock, they see George sitting on it wearing a hideous shirt. They shout and laugh. Together they go on with their trip. They spend the first night on an island. The second day they have trouble finding a place to sleep, but after a long search they can sleep in the house of a young mother.

They go on with their trip. , figthing and quarreling over every little thing they can think of. One day at lunch Harris disappears, but he turns out to have been sitting on a small stream overgrown with grass.

Several days later they see something black laying in the water. It turns out to be a dead woman. They hand her over to people on the shore.

When they leave Oxford it starts to rain. They try to sleep in the boat the first night, but decide to go ashore the second night. They go to a restaurant J. knows and eat there.

The end.

NOTE: The three men talk alot about their memories, which are supposed to be funny (it is a humorous novel). Almost the entire book consists of these memories, and the thoughts of J. So the actual story is not so big.

Personal opinion:
An extremely dull book. I don?t think I?ve ever read such crap. The anecdotes were probably very funny around 1900, but they are antiques now, not even funny enough to make me smile. Putting this book on my list was a mistake. This is the only book in my list for English this year which I didn?t like at all. Sorry, K. Jerome, I?ll never read one of your books again!