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Here are the book's opening sentences: The upper part of Grand Central Station is large and splendid like the Baths of Caracalla. “Your rooms are on Isabel la Catolica,” said Guillermo. “How kind of you,” said I. “Pension Hernandez.” “What is it like?” “The manager is very unkind. He would not let me have my clothes when I was arrested. But you will have no trouble.” We never find out why Guillermo got arrested, or even who he is, but this little exchange is a perfect introduction to Bedford's style: speed, omission, the sharp bite of event, without the tedious explanation. She won't waste our time on what, she assumes, we already understand. That is one of the joys of reading her: she thinks we are as sophisticated as she is. Her writing is like the conversation of a clever, worldly friend who we wish we came by more often. Her sentences are frequently incomplete, her grammar non-standard, her chapter titles a brazen lie. The chapter on the town Queretaro gets to Queretaro only in the last paragraph, because Bedford wants to tell us about Mexican provincial inns instead. “Don Otavio” is not just a travelogue. Buried inside it is a novel, about the title character, a man on whose doorstep she and her companion “E” presented themselves with a letter of introduction, as people did in those days. Everyone, whether or not he plans to visit Mexico, should read “A Visit to Don Otavio.” I will merely say that this is the only travel book I know of where one cries at the end.
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In part, “Don Otavio” is classic travel writing. It provides a carefully meditated history of the country; it contains heart-stopping description of the landscape. This being Mexico, we are also given the scenes of disorder and squalor so dear to old-time English travel writers, but we never get the note of astonished, white-man grouchiness that we find, to hilarious effect, on every page of Eevelyn Waugh's accounts of his journeys. Bedford's astonishments, just as funny, are different.