A Good Read

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

After a long and eventful life Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his final destination, but he is still enjoying good health and isn’t remotely interested in the big celebration being organised for his 100th birthday, so he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey. It would be the adventure of a lifetime for anyone else, but Allan has led a mercurial existence, with a larger-than-life backstory.    

The first stop as he leaves the home is the railway station, intending to travel as far as his available cash will allow. There he meets an angry young man who asks Allan to look after his case while he goes to the toilet. The train arrives before the man returns so Allan just takes the case with him. He leaves the train at a remote abandoned station and starts walking until he reaches a cabin in the woods lived in by an old man similar to himself. Meanwhile the young man asks the whereabouts of the old man and leaves the train at the same stop. He then guesses where Allan has gone and finds the cabin. He is even more angry by now and demands the return of his case. A fight ensues, the old boys overpower him and lock him in a fridge. They drink a lot of alcohol and forget about him.

He was a bad man anyway.
There then follows an unlikely but very amusing story of Allan getting mixed up with drug dealers, a motley crew of flawed but interesting characters, and an elephant! The story is also interspersed with flashbacks of Allan’s life and how he inadvertently managed to be in the right place at the wrong time and helped influence a number of events that changed the course of twentieth century history.

Quirky and ludicrous, this is a fun read.

∼ Happy Reading∼ 

Polly x