Though I have never met the author, I first came across Ogilvie on a Thai-expat forum many years ago where, among all the endless debates and personality clashes, his was one of the few sane voices. Not just sane, but wise and very funny. I loved his writing then as I love it now; so in a sense I was looking forward to reading this book long before it was ever published.
And it doesn't disappoint. Ogilvie shares his experiences willingly and with such sharp and witty turns of phrase that even the most frustrating parts of his life-story leave the reader fascinated and chuckling. I mean, who would have thought that anyone could find such great comic material in the endless bureaucracy of the Thai immigration system?
If I have any criticism of the book it is that the first chapter can be a little disorientating with its aimless wander around Portsmouth, but once the account of the author's moves from Singapore to Canada to Thailand get going, this book picks up a great pace and I read it through with huge pleasure, unwilling to put it down.
The greatest fun for me started in chapter three with the story of Holly, the "flea infested, pregnant, aggressive, sociopathic, probably rabid Dalmation with a gammy leg" that Ogilvie and his wife so kindly take in and adopt. Holly turns out to be a very fussy eater and clueless mother but I laughed all the way through the chapter.
Where Ogilvie is even better is in his descriptions of life's "little Hitlers". He describes the near-impossible hoops they had to jump through to sell up in Canada and set up a business in Thailand, and their experiences - familiar to anyone living abroad - with various embassies, government departments and banks. But there is no whinging in any of this; frustration is turned instead to humour and to an always upbeat, positive, and inspiring outlook on life.
And it is this, even more than the great laughs, which makes "Home Thoughts From a Man" a truly magnificent book and warrants the full five stars in this review.
This is a fascinating journey from a thoughtful British engineer (and excellent writer) who--dissatisfied by what the UK has to offer him--takes off on a journey of adventure. He tries living in Singapore, Canada and Thailand, to hilarious effect, especially with regard to governmental and corporate inefficiency, ex-pat life, and his Thai wife's sentimental penchant for bringing home pregnant stray dogs.
Ogilvie, for all his turning his back on Britain, still boasts a dry-as-a-bone British wit, and part of his saga (he is now a successful Thai-based entrepeneur) make laugh-out-loud reading. This is NOT your average disillusioned-Brit-abroad book: he has trenchant and well-expressed views on cultural differences, relationships, and food. Here's an example, on a local Thai chef, whose husband and she had regular dust-ups: 'Interestingly, the spiciness of her salads is in direct proportion to how annoyed she is with her husband. . . On one of these occasions I made the mistake of ordering her yum moo manao; and while she and my wife chatted about ways to kill a husband I single-handedly worked my way through a dish whish had already burned a hole through its plate and was half-way through the stone-slab table by the time I'd finished.'
Recommended especially to those, like me, who have lived abroad, though I've never met the author in my old haunts (Singapore, Burma, Bangkok). Or just to those with a strong sense of the ridiculous and an inquiring mind.
