Next Exit Magic Kingdom: Florida Accidentally Book

As much-lauded travel writer Rory (Stalin's Nose, The Oatmeal Ark) MacLean cheerily admits on the first page of his latest book, the conception of Next Exit Magic Kingdom was an accident. He had been intending to write a dark, deeply researched thesis on Germany but then glanced in some tabloid travel pages and realised no-one took holidays in Germany, and that lots of people took holidays in Florida. So, in search of sun, sea, sex--and better sales for his book--off he went to the land of Goofy and conch fritters. The result, for all its shambolic construction and its air of affable laziness, is a minor triumph of the travel writer's art; this is probably because, as MacLean discovers, Florida is itself the camp, self-regarding epicentre of pleasure-seeking recreation. Whether he's drinking "Celestial Seasoning Red Zinger tea" in a new age cafe, visiting the "Fern Capital of America", swimming in the swampy seas in his "Like Naked Fig-Leaf Swimwear", or just hanging out with the rollorblading "bohunks" of Miami Beach, MacLean finds a US state that is a state of mind, or rather, a state of laid-back, languid, post-ironic, sun-baked mindlessness. There are serpents in this airhead Eden, of course. As MacLean points out, the hot mosquito-riiden Florida panhandle might be relatively crime-free, but that's got something to do with the 1.8m American citizens in prison. And the suburbs of Miami might be a vivid palette of cultures and skin tones, but they are also sitting on the faultline of some potentially violent ethnic sensitivities. This is not a flawless book. The ending is weak, the writing sometimes self-indulgent. But it is a sharp, funny, engaging and rather brave attempt to pin down the essence of a very strange, yet strangely magnetic place. --Sean ThomasRead More