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Madcap escapades: The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones, by Owen Booth, reviewed

8 August 2020

9:00 AM

8 August 2020

9:00 AM

The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones Owen Booth

4th Estate, pp.352, 14.99

The narrative of an adolescent travelling by water with an older companion, undergoing trials and ordeals, encountering scoundrels and villains, with glimpses of society from high to low as they drift pass: it doesn’t take long before the flavour of this picaresque novel starts to seem hauntingly familiar.

In his mid-teens towards the end of the 19th century, Dan, like Huckleberry Finn, escapes from a drunken father, and, though his journey is down the waterways of Europe rather than the Mississippi, the way he silently registers the corruption he sees all around him is deeply reminiscent of his literary forebear....

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