From Publishers Weekly
Take a traveler as reluctant as Anne Tyler's accidental tourist and add the number of misadventures found in
The Out-of-Towners, and you have the recipe for Cornwell's hilarious, adventure-packed first novel. Valedictorian hopeful Vassar Spore has her summer all planned out when her bohemian grandmother somehow blackmails her Type A parents into letting her take Vassar backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos. So instead of enrolling in AP courses in summer school, Vassar finds herself hiking through jungles with Grandma Gerd and an Asian cowboy chaperone, and battling food poisoning, venom-carrying critters and primitive tribes (one of which holds Vassar hostage). The more humiliations and unwanted surprises Vassar endures, the more likable she becomes, shedding pride and primness along with her obsessive reliance on routine. Her rapid succession of crises, while jaw-dropping, appears more plausible than the family secret that is revealed bit by bit during the course of their travels. Although readers will probably figure out the mystery long before the protagonist does, the exotic settings and the wacky predicaments will exercise a strong enough grip to hold readers' imaginations. Ages 12-up.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Like her parents, 16-year-old Vassar is a Planner with a capital P! She leaves nothing to chance (guess where she plans to go to college?). Never, that is, until the doorbell rings one night, and before you can say unexpected, Vassar finds herself backpacking through the jungles of Southeast Asia with Gertrude, her madcap artist grandmother. How could her parents have permitted this? Well, it has something to do with what Vassar thinks of as The Big Secret. Will she solve the mystery before she's completely undone by fallout from Grandma's relentless acts of spontaneity? What do you think? Although too long and too filled with accounts of Vassar's endless toilet troubles, this first novel has its amusements and diversions, including Vassar's share of romance with a self-styled Malaysian cowboy. The best part, however, is the vividly realized setting. Cornwell has obviously been there and done that, and her novel is much the richer—and funnier—for it. Cart, Michael
