I felt thrilled reading this unusual travel book.... - Rated 
Whatever idea you have about a travel book, be ready to change it after you start reading this unusual travel book.
By Mr. Fallowel ability to observe interesting details about people and places in a very witty way, New Zeland becames a place where condradictory aspects of our western culture becames very vivid.
I really think Mr. Fallowell has the courage to expose his feeling in telling you everything about it.
All about Duncan - Rated 
If you want to learn more about New Zealand do not get this book. The travel writing is focussed on the author - his interests (the Oliviers, Rose Wine, etc), moods, philosophies, sex life - not on the country he was visiting. I felt cheated.
Telling it like it is. - Rated
Nowadays most of us seem to wander around in a shame-faced state of fear, embarrassment and political correctness. There aren't many who wear their heart and soul on their sleeve, tell it like it is. John Lennon was one. Duncan Fallowell is another. This third travel book is not only a great piece of globetrotting; it's also a no-holds-barred circumnavigation of his head, exploring some of the knottiest problems preoccupying us these days - global warming, immigration, wondering what on earth we're doing here. It's brave, poignant and uncompromising. New Zealanders weren't too pleased by his revealing how they've wantonly destroyed much of their imperial and architectural heritage - but I think they should decorate Mr Fallowell for ripping down the net curtains on what had lately become, in the world's eyes, the new Middle Earth. Ten out of ten.
Going as far as you like - Rated
Readers who have enjoyed his books on St Petersburg and Sicily will know that
Duncan Fallowell's travel writing is in a class of its own.His trip to New
Zealand in search of memories of the Old Vic Tour of 1948 led by the Oliviers
was certain to surprise the natives and any readers who expected a smooth
travelogue in the style of Newby or Leigh Fermor. What you get is a double
journey. The first is by plane,bus,car and foot through the towns, cities and
mountains of New Zealand. Occasionally he stumbles into Paradise but all too
often he finds a landscape ravaged by greedy developers and city planners
indifferent to the qualities of the environments they have destroyed.
The second, parallel journey is through the extraordinary contents of Fallowell's mind as he jump-cuts from food to sex, religion to history,
bars to backrooms, and dialogue to description.
As any traveller is entitled to do, he jabs occasionally at the soft and
sensitive parts of New Zealands self-image. Maybe this is why the book
has ruffled national feathers. But since Fallowell is so bracingly
honest about his own desires and behaviour readers should not expect
him to be any less so in his reactions to their country.
Highly recommended; but I wish the publishers could have given us a map.
Paradise retold - Rated
Milton wrote at the beginning of Paradise lost 'in his slender book a vast design unfold'. To travel is to learn about oneself and the place where one came from.Go as far as you can ,stay at home and read the book. The author didn't stay at home hence the book . Willpower takes the author over the first hurdle 'out the front door' a bequest helps. What also helps are guides to take the writer through the journey,famous actors playing in doomed theatres, doomed writers exiled in England and the quest for pleasure, NZ,the destination beloved by cliche,taken seriously.
Katherine Mansfield,one of the exiled writers,wrote ,the short story is titled the canary, of sorrow as the underlying element of life.Is their an underlying melancholy or despair in this NZ journey or is it bewilderment.For me its a fascination with life , this is mixed with the ability to smile and move on.The book begins with a head ache in singapore it ends with spirit landing on Mars.
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