The release date for the English version of 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' by
Bill Bryson is Oct 2006. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
A colorful, sentimental, and funny memoir of growing up in the 1950s from one of the most well-known and best-selling writers in the English language
In the midst of the biggest generation in American history—the baby boomers—Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in the heart of the country in 1951. Being among the greatest and funniest authors of our day, he is in an ideal position to extract 24-carat memoir gold from his recollections of an entirely American boyhood. Bill Bryson had a lavish dream life as a superhero growing up, much like millions of his generational contemporaries. Using an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel around his neck as a cape, he defeated terrible evildoers (and morons)—in his imagination—while running about his home and neighborhood in his thunderbolt-emblazoned jersey. He went by the moniker "The Thunderbolt Kid."
Bill Bryson uses this character as a launchpad to recreate his family's life and the life of his home city in the 1950s in all its sublime normality—a life that is both utterly familiar to all of us yet as far and unachievable as an other galaxy. He tells us it was a joyous time, when DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were thought to be innocuous or even beneficial for you, while things like cars, TVs, and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) got bigger and more common with every year that went by. He immerses us in the life of his devoted yet quirky family, presenting us with loving portraits of his mother, who worked as the home furnishing editor for the same newspaper and had little opportunity to practice domestic arts at home, and his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and ardent isometric exerciser. Readers of A Walk in the Woods, an earlier classic by Bill Bryson, will be happy to see the everlasting Stephen Katz back in these pages, as he is depicted physically stealing boxcar loads of alcohol. The deviously cunning Willoughby brothers, who use their scientific aptitude and can-do attitude to gloriously destructive purposes, join him in the Bryson gallery of iconic characters.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is one of Bill Bryson's most wonderful books to date. It is warm and hilarious beyond belief, and it is filled with all of his trademark, spot-on insights. Anyone who has ever been young will find it captivating.