Yorick, Sterne's Englishman abroad, is blithely unconcerned by famous views or monuments. Bumping along in his coach, the amiable parson buttonholes us with tales of his encounters with all manner of men and women -- particularly the attractive ones. And, as drama piles upon drama, anecdote, flirtation and digression, his destination takes second place to an exhilarating voyage of emotional discovery. Interweaving sharp wit with gaiety, irony with sentiment, Sterne creates a deliberately artless novel which calls to mind the modernism of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. In A Sentimental Journey, Woolf declared, 'we are as close to life as we can be'.
