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The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid

Travels Through my Childhood

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The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid

By: Bill Bryson
Narrated by: Bill Bryson
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About this listen

Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people's hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman.

Bill Bryson's first travel book opened with the immortal line, 'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.' In his deeply funny new memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s America. It was a happy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout. This is a book about growing up in a specific time and place. But in Bryson's hands, it becomes everyone's story, one that will speak volumes - especially to anyone who has ever been young.

©Bill Bryson; (P)Corgi Audio Americas Art & Literature Authors State & Local United States Funny

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Critic reviews

A wittily incisive book about innocence, and its limits, but in no sense an innocent book...Like Alan Bennett, another ironist posing as a sentimentalist, Bryson can play the teddy-bear and then deliver a sudden, grizzly-style swipe...might tell us as much about the oddities of the American way as a dozen think-tanks. (Boyd Tonkin)
Always witty and sometimes hilarious...wonderfully funny and touching.
A funny, effortlessly readable, quietly enchanted memoir...Bryson also provides a quirky social history of America...he always manages to slam on the brakes with a good joke just when things might get sentimental.
Takes us on yet another amiable ramble through terrain viewed with his characteristic mixture of bemused wit, acerbic astonishment and sweet benevolence...we come closest to the real Bryson in this, his first true memoir...encompasses so much of human experience that you want to smile and sob at once...Bryson's evocation of an era is near perfect: tender, hilarious and true.
He can capture the flavour of the past with the lightest of touches...marvellous set pieces...As a chronicler of the foibles and absurdities of daily life, Bryson has few peers.
Is this the most cheerful book I've ever read, or the saddest?...hilarious...a lovely, happy book.
Bryson [writes] with a whiff of irony and a stronger perfume of affection, but never the stink of sentimentality. Darting between his life and the trajectory of America, he slips in a few key contextualising details, which he deploys with the same deft ease that made his A Short History of Nearly Everything so sneakily edifying...very few [memoirs] contain a well of happiness this deep, or this complexly rendered.
The beautifully realised elegiac tone of his childhood memoir invites readers to go tumbling down the rabbit hole of memory into the best days of their lives...by turns playful affectionate, gently mocking, laugh-out-loud funny and even wistfully sad. His greatest gift is as a humorist, however, so it is the snickers, the guffaws and the undignified belly laughs he delivers on almost every page that make it worth buying...probably the funniest book you'll read this year. No, dammit. It is the funniest book you'll find anytime soon.
Makes you wish that you could emigrate, become a child, get a flat-top haircut and some longlaced baseball boots, and sneak in and take up residence unnoticed with little Billy Bryson in his parents' household...he doesn't so much tell jokes as let his sentences stretch out and relax into feet-up, contented good humour...you can laugh along with Bryson, rather than at him.
Happy childhood memoirs are every bit as fascinating to read as anguished ones if they are well written, and Bryson's prose flows like maple syrup...has an exquisite comic turn of phrase.
All stars
Most relevant
The warning don't 'drive and listen' should appear on this title. I have listened to it while travelling back and forwards from work and let me tell you, it's hard to drive with laughter tears in your eyes! I had to pull over when at the part about his fathers night time snacks I was laughing so hard. This is without a doubt the funniest book on childhood memories I have ever come across. It is perfectly written and read. Do not miss this book.

Should have a warning label!

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Anyone who loves Bryson's other works will love this. No ordinary biography - rather a nostalgic snapshot of life as a child in Iowa in the 1950s, complete with observations on society, the threat of a third world war and a sense of innocence long since forgotten.

Another 'Bill' Classic

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Another wonderfully funny book from Bill Bryson. Accompany little extra-terrestrial 'Billy' on a delightful stroll through 1950's Iowa with stops along the way to sample the air, browse a comic, sip chocolate milk at the local diner or vaporise an annoying opponent with a hard stare. The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid combines laser-sharp humour and clear-eyed nostalgia occasionally interrupted by world events that only ever threaten to nudge the apple-cart rather than upset it entirely.

Read by Bill Bryson who sounds faintly embarrassed that anyone would seriously want to hear about this stuff, let alone find it endearing. Loved every minute.

Vaporised.....

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I'm an avid Bill Bryson fan, and own all of his books, and have built up quite a collection of his spoken word books. I'll get onto the book in a moment, but it seems to me that no other person can match Bill Bryson for reading his own words. I have how books read by excellent readers, but Bryson has a calm, soothing and friendly voice that is great to listen to. On the book, if you know his work then this is pretty much more of the same. It tells his own story growing up in a long gone but attractive and exciting provincial 50's and 60's America. Although centred in Des Moines, it really tells the story of that whole baby boomer period after the war, the whole American dream timeframe, comforting and middle class. The book is abridged very well, and last for around as long as it takes me to drive between London and Glasgow! I would recommend.

Worth it for Bryson's voice alone!

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Super reading of beautiful, quirky and fascinating childhood memories , thank you Bill Bryson .

Brilliant

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