The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

The Dodd family leaves its muddy Irish parish for the glittering chaos of Continental Europe, and nothing , not the customs officials, not the foreign languages, not even the food , behaves as it should. Kenny Dodd, that improbable patriarch, guides his tribe through a minefield of cultural misunderstanding and physical discomfort in this epistolary comedy from 1854. The letters chronicle their Atlantic crossing , a seasick nightmare of cramped cabins and mounting resentment , and their arrival in France, where their provincial assumptions collide spectacularly with continental realities. Lever writes with sharp eye for the absurdity of travelers who bring their own prejudices as luggage, turning the ordinary tribulations of 19th-century tourism into a savagely funny portrait of a family determined to be humiliated by the wider world. The humor is broad, the satire is keen, and the Dodds are impossible not to recognize: that relative who complains about everything, the children who cause scenes in restaurants, the endless negotiation with foreign systems designed to frustrate. This is comic fiction at its jobbing, energetic best, now nearly forgotten but once wildly popular , a portrait of Irish provincials abroad that anticipates every disastrous family holiday ever taken.