Picked by David Mills
I had come to loath Bill Bryson, but on holiday a couple of years ago The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid was the only book around. After three pages I was laughing aloud. When was the last time a book made me do that? Actually, 1989, The Lost Continent, Bryson's first book. In between, he had become hugely successful, but his books were increasingly lazy, stuffed with stereotypes, and crushingly formulaic: cosy chuckles for tedious old farts.
The Thunderbolt Kid captures the hilarious innocence of a time when men had flat-top hair cuts that left them "looking as if they were prepared in emergencies to provide landing spots for some very small experimental aircraft". There was an unbridled enthusiasm for all things atomic (from cocktails to motels and, of course, bombs) and unending culinary innovation, (spray-on mayonnaise, frozen salads, liquid instant coffee in a spray can).
The set pieces, such as Mr Milton diving disastrously from the high board ("He hit the water – impacted really is the word for it – at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away."), or the young Billy walking in on his parents having sex, still make me snort helplessly. I always put the book down happier than when I picked it up.
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