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Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski.
Part memoir, part travelogue this is a wonderful account of the author's journey around the USA on Amtrak's long distance trains interwoven with flashbacks to her fractured childhood.
Spending considerable time within the smoking carriage on this journey (with its splendid cast of misfits, charlatans and dreamers) sends the reader straight to the underbelly of the American Dream. Funny, sad, moving and uplifting the encounters are a melancholic joy.
Clive James once said that books are life without the dull bits and this most definitely attests to that.