Three Men in a Boat

This rambling, jolly story of three friends and one small fox terrier (Montmorency, who "never did care for the river") and their ramshackle, lazy and occasionally nerve-wracking excursion up the River Thames by boat is a comic tour de force. Their brilliantly funny progress is played out against the desire they all share to escape from humdrum jobs and the constraints of suburban life in late Victorian England.