Subtitled 'A Broken Heart's Voyage Around The USA', Jim Keeble's first book is a travelogue with a difference - or, if you like, a purpose - as he traverses the States with a mission to get over being dumped by the love of his life. In the honeymoon capital of the world (Niagara Falls). Just after he's asked her to marry him.
From Las Vegas to Florida, and LA to Minnesota, Keeble goes in search of something, or somebody, to help him over his heartbreak and get his self-esteem back on a level. I would imagine mentioning to a prospective date that he's on the almost immediate rebound wouldn't go down too well, and so it proves when Mary in LA gets spooked by his tearful reminiscences of his former girlfriend and flies to the other side of the country, ostensibly to visit her brother. You can't help thinking the author had a little do with it.
Thankfully, he soon bucks up and finds that the various cities he visit mirror their female inhabitants and he's soon back in the saddle. (Quite literally when he goes to a dude ranch in Arizona and falls for the surgically enhanced charms of Debbie, an ex-cheerleader from Phoenix).
From what I'd been led to believe by Hugh Grant-heavy movies and er, Vanity Fair, an Englishman barely has to open his mouth in the States to have a bevy of American women falling over themselves to date him, but it takes the hapless Keeble over 200 pages before he gets lucky (at his best friend's wedding). Fortunately he has a wry way with prose and by the time he jets out of JFK back to the UK, he feels reborn in the USA and the reader is cheering along with him.
Independence Day is a fine, funny read and could almost be a self-help book if, like the author, you've been left distraught by the person you thought you wanted to marry but also have an inkling to see the USA in all its glory. And who hasn't been in that position?! [David Stainton]
Rating: 4 out of 5
Like this? Try Marry Me by Carey Marx or My Fat Brother by Jim Keeble
