Customer Reviews

Eating Europe: A Meta-Nonfiction Love Story (Writing Travel)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Eating Europe" is a delightfully different entry in the category of Provence travel memoirs. What begins as a light-hearted adventure, with the narrator and his wife wining, dining, and bantering their way across southern France, turns into something heavier, darker, and more thought-provoking. In the wake of 9/11 the couple return to France, sadder and older, weighed down by the gravity of world events and struggling to understand each other's responses to the world around them. Volkmer's skillful prose pulls the reader into Jon and Janet's world, occasionally playing with frame-breaking techniques that challenge and entertain. A terrific read.

I purchased this book on the recommendation of a friend and got much more than I expected. The first half is a romantic romp through the French country side, with witty gastronomical observations riding the rumble seat while the relation between the lovers, Jon and Janet, occupies the driver's seat or sometimes rides shotgun. Then things get complicated as the writer's consciousness about truth duels with his need to live with the terms of his professorial position and meet the requirements of a grant, while, at the same time, he drives and loves. This exploration of romance, literary genre, and writing with conscience is, in my opinion, close to genius. While I would not call it a Provence Travel Memoir, as others have, I'd call it a great trip, worth taking.

The prose roped me in from the beginning, even before I was able to discern what the book was about. I continued to read, for the sheer enjoyment of the pictures the writing produced. Eventually, I realized I was reading anecdotes that could just as easily been about me and one of my partners as about the author and his wife. Universal themes of relationships emerged from every chapter as I read on. Some brought back happy memories, some brought back painful memories. I substituted myself for the author and read faster and faster, in spite of the fact I wanted to make the book last. Joy of reading came from exploration of the human soul. It was the same kind of joy, from the same source, I have gotten from Dostoyevsky, and Kesey, and Helprin, and many other authors.

I derived an immense amount of pleasure from Eating Europe, yet I gave it only 4 stars. I felt no resolution. Instead I felt that literary trickery had been substituted for an ending to the story. That is why I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5.

High recommendations for an unusual travel book that takes the author and his wife from Amsterdam to Alsace, and from light-hearted banter to more sober reflections. Written with wit, insight, and heart, this is a very enjoyable read!

If you happen to be one, then, really, what better, more necessary time to be a travel writer than now? When the current political clime has us in hock--socially, empathetically--to the wider world? When what "they're" thinking and what "we're thinking" is seemingly so dissonant. And yet we know it isn't. And what a great example is this book of what the best travel writing can do.

We can only hope there was some sort of exchange program, that from Europe came someone as equally insightful, with a traveling partner as equally challenging and delightful. The nature of the sublime, the politics of the restaurant barker, melancholy, the availability of cheese; all are touched upon, and in the most poignant way possible.

If Charlie Kaufman rewrote Spoorloos as a romantic comedy; if John Barth got lost, not in the funhouse but in a maze of cobblestone; if a more dashing Albert Brooks drove his Winnebago through the south of France, you'd get Eating Europe. Highly recommended.

A professor of creative writing sets out on his university's dime to tour Europe and deliver a promised manuscript. Unfortunately there is no manuscript, not even an idea for one really, and Volkmer and his companion -- his wife -- are bantering but not communicating. America has invaded Iraq, France is being reviled and the Volkmers, in slow meltdown, land in Provence. Eating Europe is the result; a memoir of the creative process, the renewed flowering of a marriage and a world that saw the follies of Iraq long before the rest of us. A good read.