Greyhound

by Joanna Pocock

In 2006, in the wake of several miscarriages, Joanna Pocock travelled by Greyhound bus across the US from Detroit to Los Angeles. Seventeen years later, now in her 50s, she undertakes the same journey, revisiting the same cities, edgelands, highways and motels in the footsteps of the few women writers – Simone de Beauvoir, Ethel Mannin and Irma Kurtz – who chronicled their own road trips across the US. In Greyhound, Pocock explores the overlap of place and memory, the individual with the communal, and the privatization of public space as she navigates two very different landscapes – an earlier, less atomized America, and a current one mired in inequality, as it teeters on the brink of environmental catastrophe. Her focus is on the built-upon the rivers of tarmac, the illuminated gas stations, the sprawling suburbs and the sites of extraction created specifically to fuel contemporary life. Combining memoir, reportage, environmental writing and literary criticism, Greyhound is a moving and immersive book that captures an America in the throes of late capitalism with all its beauty, horror and complexity.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel, Essays, Nature, Biography Memoir

401 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 14, 2025

Reviews

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘A desire to be unanchored and in a state of constant movement has plagued me my whole life and yet is manifest within me alongside a paradoxical but equally profound desire for ‘home’. The two seem to need each other like demanding co-dependent siblings.’

Between four and five, but can’t think of anything quite like this (hence the rounding off) — or at least nothing to compare to (considering the content/context, narrator/voice and more). Maybe right book right time but I fucking loved this to bits. May not be for ‘all’, but it was definitely the one for me. It’s one of those books I suppose. I really like how the author described how it’s like for a woman (in differing ages/times of her life) to travel on her own (in comparison to ‘men’ — the glorified travel writing of Kerouac and those lot for instance). In any case it’s tremendously nice and almost refreshing to ‘read’ a travelogue that doesn’t (at least not ‘directly’ or you know — in a cloying, almost maudlin, slightly sickening way) ‘romanticise’ one’s travels. I find that a lot of the writing resonates with a lot of my own thoughts and feelings so maybe my rating of the book is very much subjective, admittedly.

‘Whenever I cross a border, I am hit with neurotic guilt as if I’ve committed a crime unknown even to myself. There is also the fear of simply getting everything wrong, of reading the instructions incorrectly.’

‘When I went to pay for my coffee in Cannelle, my Canadian debit card wouldn’t work, nor my British one. (I also had a Montana bank card which was equally useless.) Unlike many of the cafés and restaurants I was to visit, this one still accepted cash. I excavated the ‘emergency’ $100 bill from my wallet and handed it to the server. ‘Oh, an old one,’ she said, holding the bill up to the light—A familiar nervousness rose in me. Our steady march towards a cashless society has created a growing sense of unease within me. When you have to rely on the digital realm for the privilege of buying food or other essentials, you are being asked to trust in something other than a belief in the value of money. You are being asked to trust in technology—the very same system that monitors us, harvests and sells our data and nudges into our social media with misinformation and advertising. This move towards a cash-free world fuels an existential anxiety that I will be denied service, be shut out of the smooth running of society by having my physical money rejected.’

‘Like Steinbeck after him and Rorty before him, Miller was critical of what he saw: ‘What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle.’

‘In male accounts of the Great American Road Trip, there are fewer conversations with strangers, the individual is paramount and the car is a symbol of intoxicating, virile freedom. When John Steinbeck set off across the United States with his French poodle Charley, he was fifty-eight years old, wealthy and famous. By this point he’d written half a dozen novels and won a Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck saw the ‘ten or twelve thousand miles driving a truck, alone and unattended, over every kind of road’ as ‘the antidote for the poison of the professional sick man’. He equated his trip with manliness, pointing an accusing finger at those middle-aged men who slowed down, worried about their cholesterol levels and entered a semi-invalid stage of life. ‘I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It’s bad theater as well as bad living.’

I was curious to see what it would look like today to cross the United States without the machismo, the individualism and the car. The communal aspect of travelling by Greyhound is crucial to seeing a side of ‘America’ that very few people want to acknowledge and even fewer actually inhabit, even fleetingly. Passengers travel by bus because it is the cheapest way to move from one place to another. There are more stuffed garbage bags on a bus than suitcases on wheels. The Greyhound is where you meet those who, despite wanting and deserving a better life than the one they have, are stuck for various reasons: luck, fate, bad choices, unfair circumstances or illness. ‘Traveling by Greyhound is no pleasure trip,’ Kurtz writes. ‘Bus journeys in America are purposeful expeditions, no frills or affectations.’

‘De Beauvoir notices that in 1947 she didn’t often see women travelling alone. ‘American women,’ she wrote, ‘drive in the cities, but they rarely take a trip without a masculine escort—this is about the extent of their independence.’ Throughout America Day by Day, we encounter de Beauvoir’s views on freedom and feminism—she was after all about to write The Second Sex. ‘I’d imagined that women here would surprise me with their independence,’ she writes, adding: “American woman”, “free woman”—the words seemed synonymous…In the women’s magazines here, more than in the French variety, I’ve read long articles on the art of husband hunting and catching a man. I’ve seen that college girls have little concern for anything but men and that the unmarried woman is much less respected here than in Europe.”’

‘Since I cannot drive, I have had to be a passenger all my life. In order to cross the United States on my own, I was always going to have to do so as part of a group rather than as an individual. Simply by eschewing the car, one becomes a communitarian, a fly in the ointment of modernity and progress, however short-lived. The fact that most of the Great American Road Trip books are written by men driving cars (or trucks) while letting their fancies, their desires and their needs dictate their routes only serves to make the writings of Irma Kurtz, Ethel Mannin and Simone de Beauvoir more radical.’

‘A young woman appeared as we were reboarding and pleaded with the driver to let her on. ‘Please, sir, I just want to go home. Just let me on the bus so I can go home. Please, sir.’ She was crying. He said he couldn’t let her on. Her ticket wasn’t valid. I’d lost count of the number of adults I’d seen crying in public on this trip—Just then my phone vibrated. My hotel in Amarillo was asking me to check in, the way you might check in for a flight. They wanted all my information confirmed via their app. I declined the opportunity.’

‘‘What you need is a boyfriend for two days to show you around Tulsa,’ he offered.
I laughed. ‘Maybe you could just tell me where I can find a nice bar to get a beer and listen to some decent music?’
He drew me a map.
Would Karl have taken his offer up? I don’t think so. I think she would have taken the map and run as I did—When I told him I was heading to New Mexico and then Vegas he took my journal and began writing down names of people he knew in those towns—The beer was beginning to talk and I took my leave—’

“A ragged person running away from loss. Marc Augé, the late French anthropologist, sees these revisited ‘places of memory’ as opportunities to face ‘the image of what we are no longer’. A place can offer a palimpsest of one’s past and present: the superimposition of our current selves onto the memories we have of a place allow us to be, in Augé’s words, ‘tourists of the private’.’

‘Another man at the bar, this one in a tweed jacket and a flat cap, noticed me writing in my journal and came over to tell me that his wife had just written a novel. He asked where I lived and when I told him, he said he hated London because there were too many ‘different colours and people from all over’—words that tumbled straight into my journal. The owner—heard I was from out of town. He sat on the stool next to mine and told me he had emigrated from Kent. He was another London-hater. ‘No one bloody speaks English there!’ They all laughed.’

‘I laughed. ‘Do you really think I am going to tell a guy I’ve just met in a bar where I am staying?’ I don’t remember what I answered, if anything, but whatever it was, he must have taken it to mean I was making fun of him. He started shaking his fists in front of his face and I walked faster. I knew I was going in the general direction of my hotel, but I didn’t know the route very well, nor the name of the street I needed to turn down. I couldn’t pull out my map, so I just carried on walking. Eventually he stopped and I continued.’

‘—I’d found myself in a gumbo restaurant with a live band. The place was loud and the crowd was composed mainly of old hippies. I ordered a Schafly just as some very fast Bluegrass started up. Older couples got up to dance. The music worked on me like a heartbeat. In this moment, away from anything and everything familiar, I was where I wanted to be. I didn’t really know where I was, but I wasn’t lost—’

‘—travelling alone on a Greyhound bus across the United States took me out of my mourning and placed me squarely ‘in the moment’, in seats with their sticky upholstery and dirty windows looking onto landscapes, horizons, farms, suburbs, gas stations and parking lots. I could spend hours listening to other people’s stories and losses and not have to think about my own. I was running away from grief, from my body’s inability to hold on to a growing child and from my sense of failure as a woman—’

‘That night as I lay in bed, it hit me that, being in my fifties, I had become more aware of my fragility. All through my twenties, thirties and forties, I was fearless and didn’t think twice about wandering around alone at night. But here in Detroit, I imagined violent scenarios.’

‘Planting seeds is in fact one of the most rebellious acts of resistance out there, which is why giant corporations like Monsanto are in the business of patenting seeds. By doing so, they are effectively making it illegal for farmers and Indigenous people around the world to grow the food they have been relying on for millennia.’

‘Planting seeds and growing food is a political act. Not only do these activities keep one connected to the seasons and the cycles of life, but they are a means of creating a sustainable food source should the links in the global food system collapse. When looked at from this wider perspective, transplanting cauliflowers in a hoop house in Detroit looks very sane indeed. Urban farms are accessible to people without cars, without money, without photo ID. You don’t need an app or an iPhone. They are places of community and learning. They are the places I feel most at home.’

‘The rain continued and the dry ground looked grateful for it—These somewhat anarchic, communal bus-wide conversations had lessened over the years. Most people were now plugged into their devices, barely aware of the passengers around them.’
‘—I found a strange sort of transcendence on the Greyhound. The shared experience of a group of humans, all of them wanting to get where they needed to go, hoping for some kindness, some love, something that might be just out of reach or remembering something they had left behind and were regretting. I felt buoyed by the feeling that I was not alone, that there were others around me grieving, missing loved ones, wishing life had turned out differently or heading towards something beautiful and exciting. And then there is the fact that you are not in control; this is something everyone on a bus feels, which is absent in one’s private vehicle.’

‘Cars offer a promise (or mirage) of freedom. They also contain a political and racial dimension. There has always been a disparity along the lines of race and class between those with vehicles and those without; those who have the freedom to move when and where they want to and those who don’t. Before the 2008 financial crash, 93 per cent of white American households owned at least one car. The figure for African American households was 76 per cent. African Americans were also six times more likely to use public transport. This was a statistic I saw reflected around me on the Greyhound back in 2006—Not only do cars function as machines for acts of removal and separation, but so do the roads they drive on. Roads and highways, while so often being seen as modes to connect us, as avenues to take us towards ‘Freedom’, also allow for a subtle segregation, a quiet death for those seeking the utopian ideal far from the sometimes imagined, sometimes real squalor of the city. For others, suburbia becomes an opiate, a gateway into a world unharmed by poverty and extremes of any kind.’

‘Deserts, like outer space, are places where time and space collide. The scrubby mesquite you see before you might only be three feet tall, but its roots have travelled down eighty feet under the ground and are sucking up water that fell in the form of raindrops 2,000 years before its seed had taken hold in the ground. No wonder deserts are where the mystics, visionaries, ascetics and searchers go to wander, to lose themselves and to find answers.’

‘My bag was heavy and the constant hum of despondency all around me was wearing me down. My lips were chapped and dry from the sun and wind and I was relieved that I could indulge in a large drink of water before the measly four-hour ride to Albuquerque.
When I walked into the bus station, I was hit by a foul smell. A woman with half a dozen carrier bags seemed to be the source. I imagined something dead in one of her bags. It had to be; this was the stench of death—Let everyone sit on the curb or the floor.

Don’t allow them the dignity of a chair or a glass of water or cup of coffee. It’s cheaper to let everyone fend for themselves. The material world where most of us dwelled was being ground to dust or turned to shit right before our eyes. Much of the hope I had seen in 2006 had evaporated. Worsening climate disasters, a global economic crash, meth, fentanyl and every other opioid, Covid, zero healthcare, the relocation of human transactions and experiences to the digital sphere, all of it felt like a tsunami that had been gathering in size and strength for months, years, decades. We were now living in the devastation left in its wake. I was beginning to see the United States as a failed experiment. I had grown up loving the place: I had lived in New York, Boston and Missoula, Montana. I have as much family and as many friends in the US as I do in Canada. So many places are like home to me here. But I was starting to lose faith in the whole project, in the adventure called ‘America’.’

‘Cattle in this part of Texas are force-fed as quickly as possible until they are fat enough to be slaughtered. It used to take a cow five years to grow large enough to be sent to the abattoir. Now, with antibiotics, growth hormones and a sedentary existence in a small pen, a calf can go from 220 to 590 kilos in a mere six months and be ready for slaughter in 18. What I was smelling in Amarillo was not simply the manure from these intensively raised animals, it was ‘faecal dust’—tiny particles of cow shit that get swept up and carried on the wind—the manager of the Greyhound bus station in Amarillo told me about his half-brother getting a job in a place that processes this stuff, a job with healthcare (the Holy Grail for millions of Americans), I felt genuinely happy for him. Very few of us can escape from participating in a society that has been built upon extraction and consumption if we want to survive in it.’

‘There comes a point when, as a woman travelling alone, you will meet someone who invites you to spend the night with them. I was learning on this trip that even when you hit forty and are travelling by bus in a pair of dirty jeans and a smelly T-shirt, this rule still applies. Usually, it’s easy to brush off the advances, to make a joke of them, to say you have a partner, that he trusts you and you trust him and you are not willing to break that trust. Every woman has an armour they bring out to deflect unwanted attention. I usually resorted to humour. I’ve always thought that it’s fine for anyone to declare an interest; it’s how they react to your ‘no’ that marks out the good from the bad.’

‘After we’d both eaten our meals in silence, he approached and told me how he used to be into photography but now that he was blind, he had to see what everyone else sees in his own head. He asked how I’d liked my moussaka and whether I was a tourist. Before I could answer, he said that there were better months to be a tourist in Napanee. ‘My timing is always terrible,’ I said. He replied, ‘Your timing is beautiful because I got to talk to you,’ and then turned and walked out.’

‘I had surrendered to my loss and it had rewarded me with gain. I also realised during the period shortly after—that books about grief never mention the solace of moving through space as one person among many, as one living, breathing human in a group of living, breathing humans. About how other people’s stories can swallow and consume your own stories, turning a heavy, leaden weight into a ghostly, almost translucent thing. That movement can perform a kind of alchemy, that you can trust in strangers; that without trust, there is nothing.’

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[America] is indeed a pivotal point of the world. But it isn’t only battles that are being played out. There are strangers sleeping in buses next to each other, feeling nothing but warmth for the people around them. There are sunsets and sunrises and little clouds of sand and soil being whipped up in winds somewhere in the deserts of New Mexico or Arizona or Texas. There are people laughing and there are human connections being made outside the digital world, in the world of the senses. It is these things that matter. The stars exist just where they should, all around the ‘more than sufficient Earth’ that Walt Whitman conjured. When life conspires to bring you to a patch of land under a trail of stars in our more than perfect sky, look up. Look up and keep looking up until you can’t any longer.”

I’m opening with a quote filled with ghost light beaming through the dark, because while this stupendous book is fueled by a stubborn sense of hope, it will also break your heart.

Like an hallucinatory dream in broad daylight, “Greyhound” unfurls its endless highways through the retelling of two identical road trips that Irish Canadian writer Joanna Pocock took on Greyhound buses across the U.S. in 2006 and 2023.

While the first trip was taken in the wake of personal losses and the desire to reconnect to Karl, a wildly endearing fictional character from a novel in progress; the second trip takes place in the ravaged midst of COVID, in a human and environmental landscape that feels nothing short of apocalyptic.

There are deserted downtowns and sordid motels. Weary travelers and moments of grace that will get lodged in your throat. Echoes of past road trips taken by fellow women writers like Simone de Beauvoir, Ethel Mannin and Irma Kurtz. The immensity of a land which seems to have all but lost its elusive sense of promise.

Joanna Pocock sits right up there with the great nonfiction sorceresses when it comes to radical truth-telling. There is no dancing around the facts here. Like Rebecca Solnit, she writes lyrically about the environment and the broken social contract. Like Deborah Levy, her sentences are filled with details, deep humanity and curiosity about her fellow passengers.

This is a ride you will never forget and here is a writer who stared right at the sun, moon and stars for us, urging you to look up for as long as you can.

We are all together in this mess.

[cass krug · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was such a well-researched, layered memoir that really illuminates how all of the structures that frame our lives are interconnected. like, truly just a book about everything. meanders but without feeling pointless - you can see the wheels turning in the author’s mind, taking her from idea to idea.

joanna pocock recounts her journey across the united states via greyhound bus - a journey that she made twice, 17 years apart. the first time was during the aftermath of multiple miscarriages and the death of her sister, as she took notes for a novel she was trying to write.. the second was as an older woman looking back on her past self, set against the backdrop of the pandemic and political change. travelling via greyhound allowed her to gain so much insight into the effects of climate change, gentrification, the shift to privatized, individualistic public spaces, and so much more. she also explores american road trip literature, specifically looking at other female authors who made similar journeys. i would’ve loved to get even more introspection about the events that lead to pocock’s first trip, but that’s just because i love memoirs so much. on the whole i thought this was balanced and loved seeing the connections the author was able to make.

i think this was such a unique work and it really engrossed me despite being on the longer end for me. i think i need to start branching out from memoirs and essay collections and explore some longer-form nonfiction because i learned so much from this.

[ritareadthat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Road tripping has been inherently ingrained in my nature since childhood. My parents didn't take us on many actual vacations—I can count the number on one hand—but they did know how to get in the car and get lost for the day. Piling us all in the car, behind the wheel, my dad was king of his domain. While these were short, localized trips, they were still exciting, as we would be gone an entire day—nearly every Saturday—which was a luxury experience in my secluded, sheltered world. The vacations that I did experience in my childhood were all bus trips to Florida or NYC, each one memorable in its own way. When I saw Greyhound pop up in upcoming releases, I knew I had to read it.

Believe it if you will, but I never set foot on a plane until I was 28 years old. When I owned my photography business with my ex-husband, we started traveling around the country for projects, and my feet grew wings. The memory of those road trips never left, and although air travel was taking more priority, I managed to procure many carefully planned road trips with my kids throughout their childhood.

I wanted to give a bit of a preface to my excitement and anticipation of reading this book, but allow us now to set the personal anecdotes aside. Greyhound is an evocative memoir detailing parallel journeys via Greyhound bus that the author embarked on from Detroit to LA in the US in both 2006 and 2023. The first trip served a dual purpose of helping her recover from the grief of a miscarriage and the loss of her sister. In 2023, she wanted to recreate the same trip and see how America, and herself, had changed.

Days and nights spent in motels, bus stations, bars, and restaurants are detailed and pondered over—showing a side of America that not many see. Traveling by bus, especially on a lengthy trip, reveals its microcosm of society. Joanna notates the types of individuals she encounters, as well as how her interactions with them have changed; people are more wary of strangers, Covid burnout is real, and everyone is lost on their phones. People don't actually talk to each other anymore. There is a desperation present in the America of 2023 that Joanna captures, illustrating how this disconnect is so prevalent in society today.

But this isn't just a book about road trips. Woven throughout Joanna's musings of a changed America are urgent observations of the socio-economic, climate, and ecological crises that we find ourselves in. Its prevalence as she travels from city to city is stark and disconcerting. Gentrification in Detroit ignores the portion of the city that is still struggling and desperate. In other cities, she witnesses the opposite, towns and cities decrepit and underdeveloped, abandoned. The contrast is disparate. How can we retain the balance we need? The 2023 trip overall finds many destinations desolate husks of their former selves. It is apparent that change is needed.

I have seen the word "bleak" used to describe this book in many articles and reviews. While the book does epitomize this, Joanna also shows the joy and freedom of the road trip. She pays homage to famous books and road trips of the past; she references important works by Simone de Beauvoir, John Steinbeck, Irma Kurtz, and William Least Heat-Moon. Joy and wonder can be found—albeit in snippets—of a carefree America where strangers shook hands, said hello, and gave help in times of need on the road. We see conversations with strangers, simple and mostly unmemorable, but discussions that can bring a spark of comraderie, if only for a few minutes or hours. This is what we need to hold on to. Hope in each other, in mankind, can't be surrendered. In a world where everyone is increasingly concerned with only themselves, is it not the kindness of others that keeps us forging on and restores our hope?

Joanna's writing alternated between concise and verbose depending on the subject at hand, but it was never without careful thought and reflection. This book is a dire example of what the Americans of today need to be reading and absorbing. Set aside petty grievances and take a look at what we are losing.

[Morts. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

An array of fragmentary, funny, frightening encounters on and off the eponymous bus, likely to become a socio-historical classic. A bottom-up contemporary account of capitalism clinging on by its grimy fingernails.

This offers a sharp-eyed insight into the female experience of travelling alone. How ageing 17 years between journeys affects associations, conversations and visibility. A comfortable bet could be placed on the repetition of “Where is your husband?.”

I'm still vicariously nettled by the actions of a certain motel receptionist.

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was genuinely surprised by this book. It’s at once a memoir and travelogue of a writer who took a trip across the US east to west via Greyhound bus in 2006 while experiencing grief and then again in 2023 to compare her experiences on a personal emotional level as well as to see what has changed in the physical and social landscape of the land. Little did she know that with the newest trip, she would bear witness to a sort of disintegration of the social fabric within the US from our reliance on technology and away from human interaction, class disparity, the acute distress and desperation of people experiencing poverty, the fallout of Covid-19, the effects of late capitalism in the digital age, and the insidious havoc of environmental and climate catastrophe slowly making life in the US a living hell for everyone. Sharply observed and researched, the narrative delves deep into many historical aspects of the places she visits and I learned so much. This book is a true eye opener and an incisive look at our increasingly dystopian present.

[Chiara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tooo my time with this book, and I sort of hoped it would never end. Even if I don’t agree with so many points the author makes, especially those on consciously deciding to have a child on a burning and collapsing planet, I appreciate the journey she took me on. I wish the ending were more about the actual journey than hers, but I do understand where she comes from.
I hope there will be an audiobook soon.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.75/5, rounded up)

Full RTC!

Thank you buclnched to Soft Skull Press for the #gifted copy 😍

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely read non-fiction but perhaps I should as this is easily one of the best books I've read this year. 

In 2006, after having suffered several miscarriages and the death of her sister, Joanna Pocock travelled across America - from Detroit to LA - via Greyhound bus. In 2023, she embarks on the same trip, witnessing these same corners of America almost twenty years on, in the footsteps of so few female writers and solo female travellers. Travelling as a woman in her fifties gives Joanna an entirely different experience - one of invisibility, a hard pill to swallow at times as she comes to terms with what this means for her going forward, and with what she has left behind. 

Joanna takes us from white suburbia and their dependence on fossil fuels, to the plentiful urban farms of Detroit, from the gargantuan feedlot cattle farms of Texas, to stargazing in the deserts of New Mexico, from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and waste dump, to the sprawling adult playground of Las Vegas. Joanna sees with her own eyes an America on the brink of environmental catastrophe - from poisoned lakes and tarmac so hot it burns your skin, to the stolen land and displacement of Native Americans. 

Greyhound opens your eyes to how much America is built for everyone to travel by car. Joanna's experiences of travelling by bus are gruelling at times - ridiculous departure and arrival times (particularly for a solo female traveller), closed stations, stations with no food/water/toilets, the lack of motels near the bus stations, and so on. As we move to a cashless and digitised world, the Greyhound is now becoming inaccessible to those who need it most. And of course, Joanna meets some interesting characters along the way, often those with different political views from her own, or those whose livelihood depends on the very industries contributing to the vast number of environmental issues plaguing America. But there is something to be said for the communal experience of travelling by bus, of meeting people from different parts of the US, of getting a glimpse through an overheard conversation into some of their life stories. We are in danger of losing this, of putting on headphones and turning away, of putting our bags down next to us in the hope that no one will sit and talk to us, of travelling alone in a car and not experiencing empathy for others outside of our own spheres.

There is so much else I could mention, and although much of what Joanna encounters is bleak as hell, I ultimately found the book to be nothing short of an act of hope, and one I will keep with me for years to come. 

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

surprisingly depressing

[Cait Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow wow wow!! I love this - every time I read it I wanted to tell people what I’d learnt- the social history is incredibly well researched and woven well into the story, and the autobiographical parts are touching and beautiful.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a fan of this. Not the most immediately arresting but slowly and carefully quite moving I think. Occasionally thought it teetered a bit close to poverty tourismy but also it was carefully thought through and researched and earnest

[Oolookitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really important book, this memoir offers an eyes-wide-open look at how over-consumption, rampant capitalism and the exploitation of workers has led America to a very rocky place. But it’s also a fascinating look at two trips across the country by Greyhound, years apart.

The contrast of the experience between past and present is shocking. There is no longer any effort to cater to people who need to travel by bus, who must rely on apps and iPhones and electronic money transfer, who are unable to function in a society that no longer allows people to purchase food in exchange for cash.

The bus stations have ripped out all of the telephones and water fountains. There is no shade or anywhere to sit, for fear of attracting the growing population of unhoused people. It’s really shocking and really depressing.

[Natalie]

Finally: a book that articulates my concerns and fears around the unchecked ecological damage wrought by American consumption

[Krystal Kraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been on a greyhound 2 times! Both times I encountered so many situations and walked away with some unique observations that still stick with me! Some good, some bad.

I think this book was neat and I enjoyed hearing about her journey and what she experienced in the places that she traveled through the first time and then the second time- each trip happening for different reasons.

It felt like a small reminder to do the things and have the experiences!

[Michelle van Schouwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book for would-be wanderers. Pocock captures the state of America as she travels west on often dilapidated, sometimes filthy Greyhound buses. Riding with other passengers who typically have no other options, whose luggage may be a trash bag, she hears their talk - although there is less talk in 2023 than on her first trip across the same territory in 2006 because - phones. Phones also mean the transition from signage and printed bus schedules to a less than stellar app. She finds the nation poorer, darker, and sadder than in 2006, but notes humanity and kindness here and there.

I also really enjoyed Pocock's ongoing references to other more and lesser known memoirs about traveling America. This is a "readers' book," great for meandering through odd and always interesting territory, in every sense of the word.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Timo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking memoor contrasting flyover states and their progress over a few decades, from a personal perspective

[Abbey Baier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obsessed with the Americana road trip literature because of the honest way it portrays the “greatest country in the world” in all of its broken glory

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

new hyper-fixation unlocked: rural USA

(i will write a proper review at some point for this book because it’s so different to what i usually read and i truly loved it)

[Jakobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greyhound is a portrait of a deep, dirty, and dark America. The kind you rarely see in travel writing but that says everything about a nation’s soul. Joanna Pocock turns a bus journey into a meditation on loss, landscape, and time: the slow disintegration of industry, the scars of environmental ruin, the quiet dignity of those who keep moving.

It’s a beautiful and instructive journey, at times almost sensory in its detail: the hum of engines, the dust of forgotten towns, the Texas air thick with the smell of cattle waste. A book that doesn’t romanticize travel but reveals it as a way of seeing, and of feeling, more truthfully.

[Livia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t fully immersed for the first bit of the book, but once the narration hits its stride, I was deeply immersed. She does a fantastic job jumping back and forth between the two trips and weaving the brutal and sometimes absurd experience of her time traveling with essays on car dependence, gentrification, the poisoning of the earth and insanity of single-use plastic, the digital age and the tragedy that is the loss of so many of our micro-interactions with strangers. I also really enjoyed the unexpected and brief reflections on becoming a parent during a climate catastrophe right at the end.
I also had my phone stop working while reading this, and man did it drive home how much of daily life middle-class society has accepted as requiring a cell phone. Subscriptions, bus passes, identification, even the boarding pass I would’ve had to pay TEN DOLLARS to have printed at the Breeze ticket counter
There were some things that interested me from an editorial perspective, where I wondered how many sets of eyes had been on this manuscript—say, the number of times a person’s tone is described as “mysterious” in the first few pages, or the repetition of fairly similar reflections in a way that didn’t feel entirely intentional, or the occasionally unclear time jumps. But those things all faded into the background because her analysis and clarity and honesty with what she sees, with awareness of where she’s coming from, is incredibly incisive. Highly recommend!

“I tried to focus on that and not dwell on the golf course sucking up fresh water, the solar mirrors incinerating birds, the waste from a mine sending radioactive material into giant swimming pools threatening the drinking water of Native Americans, the prescient words of a writer we should have paid more attention to.
It was all there, all of it, curled up and huddled in the final lap of this trip like a sick dog.”

[Manoj Ambalavanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Greyhound is the reflections of author Joanna Peacock as she processes loss by traveling the US via greyhound two separate times, 17 years apart.

The commentary of the lack of travel infrastructure, breakdown of community values, genuine human connection and growing isolation in america were probably my favorite insights. All this was done through the lens of those that are often overlooked but did inspire a commitment to do better for all.

Equally as poignant was her look into how corporations and greed dictate our relationship with the land and world we live in. After a while though, these points felt like beating a dead horse, and dragged the journey more than it progressed.

TL;DR, i loved her exploration into human interactions via a Greyhound and “fly over” cities. Would’ve preferred less environmental doomsday.

[Alex Dikelsky]

It was pretty eye opening. Her route was: YYZ -> Napanee Ontario -> Toronto -> Detroit -> Columbus -> St. Louis -> Tulsa -> Amarillo -> ABQ -> Phoenix -> Las Vegas -> Los Angeles.

The worst leg was Detroit -> Columbus -> St. Louis by far. The driver from Columbus to St. Louis quit on the job and they were a day late. I think Detroit -> Chicago -> St. Louis would have been a much better idea, especially if you're not even leaving the station in Columbus. The Chicago -> St. Louis Amtrak is fine and I've taken it before, that's a pretty common route, but no one should have to know that before booking a trip.

I want to read her other book Surrender now. She mentioned that when she was in rural Montana she felt most free, but when I was living in a rural area in Iowa without a car I felt much less free than I do now living in a city.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best NF books I have read in a long time. It's not just about traveling by Greyhound but it's about America today and how it was in 2006. The author, Canadian by birth and living in London now, traveled in the US by Greyhound back in 2006. Sixteen years later she attempts to replicate the same journey, but it is a very different work. As someone who does not own a car and relies entirely on public transit, I found this compelling and relatable. It is memoir, travelogue, social history, and so much more. A definite keeper for my shelves. And now am working backwards with other women memoirists (she references in this book) who also traveled the US by Greyhound.

[Liza_lo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful memoir that weaves the personal with the decline of America, ecology, and the fraying of social spaces.

In 2006 Joanna Pocock took a journey across America via Greyhound, a combination of research trip for a novel she was writing and escape from the grief of losing a sibling and her own fertility issues. In 2023, referencing notes from that era she recreates her trip.

Stunning sentences and reflections. Pocock writes with compassion and love.

[Joe Skilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Marc Augé, the late French Anthropologist, sees these revisited ‘places of memory’ as opportunities to face ‘the image of what we are no longer’. A place can offer a palimpsest of one’s past and present: the superimposition of our current selves into the memories of a place allows us to be, in Augé’s words, ‘tourists of the private’.”

[Nell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the study of the road trip genre and a lot of the musings on america. I put marks down because this should have been the perfect book for me and had all the good bones but I found so much to be irritated by. A lot of the complaints and analogiess through the course of the book felt on the nose or like they had already aged poorly since 2023.

[Tricia · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was an interesting read but jumps around alot and really does go off on tangents.

[Kit★]

Always been weirdly intrigued by the idea of travelling across the country by Greyhound bus, so this sounds interesting.