Customer Reviews

Emails from the Edge: The Life of an Expatriate Wife

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

 

 

I was very disappointed by this book. I had read the whole book because I kept thinking eventually she would find some bit of understanding about the host culture or some revalation about humanity, but I don't think she ever thought about anyone but herself and her friend on the other side. In the early stages of the book Ms. Maguire (publishing name) decided that she would write a book based on the e-mails from a friend who answered her call for help. From that point on she decided not to understand anything about Japan (i.e. misspelling names of places, not even taking the time to understand or learn about the strange things she saw). She called the US the "real world."

Instead of coming to learn how to accept and understand the host culture, Ms. Maguire draws herself into a coccon which centers around herself and her computer and shuts her eyes to all else, calling it either stupid or inconveinent.
There was a point where she could have sought enlightenment when a person told her she was "needy," but that never panned out.

For anyone who is looking for information or stories about living as an expatriate, this serves only as a bad example of how one does not thrive in a foreign land. I would highly suggest the following books if you are looking for more than just personal sob stories:

The Expert Expatriate (it should be called the expatriate's bible, highly reccomended)
Culture Shock: The Wife's Gudie (and other books by the author, Robin Pascoe)
Books related to intercultural communications
Third Culture Kids

I have lived in Japan, the US, Switzerland, Germany and Singapore. I speak fluently three langauges, even though I am profoundly hearing impared (Japanese being one of them). To live abroad is an excellent chance to learn more about and understand the world (even is it is not on your list of things you would like to do). Please refer to the list above for suitable reading material that will prepare you for your move, be it the first or 50th time. Abroad, careful preparation and information is your best friend.

If you want to know how to make the worst of an international move, you couldn't have found a better book than Ms. Maguire's.

As a fellow expatriate, I was ashamed to think that this is how people will see our world. Japan indeed is foreign, and I understand how the woman feels about being isolated. But the way to end the isolation where she is was to use the Internet time she had to look for information in her area. Getting out of her apartment, meeting people where she was and trying to understand the local customs goes a long way toward understanding and adjusting to a new place. Reaching out through email is great--I do it often--but a constant stream of whining does no one any good. This was a book that was a good idea spoiled.

And if she thinks Japan is rough, heaven help her if she ended up in a real hardship post.

This was a silly, slight book.

From her apartment in Yokohama, Japan - isolated by barriers of language both written and spoken, with only her husband to talk to although surrounded by millions in the world's largest city - Margie Tovrea sends out a cry for help over the Internet. From her home near Houston, Texas, Sandy Davis answers that cry.

This story of an expatriate wife, who follows her husband while his job assignments take him from foreign country to foreign country (as well as all over the United States), could not have been written in an earlier era even though Americans have been living and working overseas for as long as this country has existed. What makes Margie's Japan experience (and therefore, this book) unique is the immediacy of her correspondence with her friend Sandy, who has more than an inkling about what Margie is going through because Sandy's husband is in the same business. In fact, the two women met while both were living in a Western employees' compound in Saudi Arabia, when their husbands had earlier assignments there.

Sandy becomes Margie's lifeline, offering an almost daily window into The Real World. Where one can buy food that looks and tastes familiar, and has readable labels. Where the tradespeople with whom a woman must deal treat her as a valued customer, instead of as an intruder whose presence in their country gives constant offense. Where there are books to read and people to talk to, and where the bills she must pay make sense - as do the operating instructions on her household appliances!

Being an expatriate wife isn't new to Margie, but living in a land where she feels completely unwelcome and where there are absolutely no other Western residents within reach is something she never imagined before experiencing it. Sandy, the true friend every human being deserves but may not be fortunate enough to find, experiences it right along with her. Gladly and lovingly, responding to Margie's e-mails with messages that make one thing plain to any reader who ever had a close friend: the woman in Texas is drawing just as much emotional sustenance, and is learning just as many lessons from their correspondence, as the one in Japan.

You'll learn a lot about the Far East by reading EMails From the Edge. You'll also learn what life is like for U.S. workers abroad on more typical assignments, and for the families who follow them. But what you will remember about this book, and would not find in any more conventional "travel story," is the friendship that prompted its e-mails.

Highly recommended!

EMAILS FROM THE EDGE
ISBN: 1-930252-46-3
By: Kristie Leigh Maguire
(with contributions from Adrianna Larson)

Review by: Joan Moore Lewis, Southern Fiction Author, Georgia USA

A picture postcard description of the exotic Land of the Far East and her husband's job lured Margie Tovrea to Japan in June 1997. Past international assignments had landed them in St. Croix in the U. S. Virgin Islands, Aruba, Panama, Thailand and Saudi Arabia. But nothing had prepared Margie for the isolation she would face in Japan.
The only English words that reached her ears were those uttered by her husband, Stan, and television's CNN International. Due to the language barrier, Margie could neither converse with neighbors nor identify food in the grocery stores.

Then in August 1997, a miracle happened! Margie was reunited via email with her friend, Sandy Davis, whom she had met in Saudi Arabia. While Margie was "losing it" in Yokohama, Sandy, who had returned to the U. S., was "kickin' it" in Houston, Texas.

"Emails from the Edge" is the actual correspondence between an expatriate wife and a Houston housewife who laughed and cried as they shared each other's life on-line almost every day for seven months. You will laugh and cry also as you read this story of deep friendship and understanding.

I highly recommend "Emails from the Edge" to anyone who has at any time dreaded grocery shopping or spending time with family, friends and neighbors.

I had this book in my TBR pile for quite some time, then was very disappointed. As someone who has traveled abroad quite a bit as well as lived abroad, I learned that the best way to endure is to make the best of every situation, and I do not feel the author did that. Through her eyes, all I learned was that she did not like it there. She needed to get out more. So what if her husband had to work. So what if she couldn't speak the language. How else will you learn? And with a military base nearby, as she mentioned near the end of the book, she surely could have found some people whom she could communicate with. Throughout the book she mentions writing this book and including pictures. Where were the pictures? Had she included some, maybe the reader could see things from her eyes. All this is, is a bound book of emails between two parties.

EMAILS FROM THE EDGE
ISBN: 1-930252-46-3
By: Kristie Leigh Maguire
(with contributions from: Adrianna Larson)
Review by: Tami Parrington

From the moment you start this story, you feel what it's like to be the wife of a traveling executive, living in foreign places, the camaraderie built within the close-knit communities of the families stationed in far-away places. You feel the adventure and the fear, but at the same time, the good-times and friendships.

Ms. Maguire, writing as Margie Tovrea pulls us into her life, and tells us of the world she lives in with exciting ability. When she learns she is to be stationed in Japan she's thrilled, it's another adventure in an exotic place she's always wanted to go to, but the reality of it is much different than any she's yet experienced.

We feel her fear and panic, as she's isolated with no other band of expatriates to navigate the strange world with. Trapped and most-times alone, with her husband working, she has to learn to adjust to a life in a world where she doesn't speak, read, or write the language. Where the customs are totally different from any she's yet lived in.

Then, she discovers the Internet. Reaching out through the lifeline of space, she makes contact with an old friend made in a past expat camp, one who can relate to the experiences she's living in. You feel the attachment and the desperate need for friendship that creates a stronger bond than any normal reality would, and that's just the beginning of the journey through the year spent in the land of the rising sun.

Recommendation:

This book is a must read for women of all ages. It helps you to remember the true value of friendship and come to the realization that distance is nothing but space between friends...

I had to smile when I read `Emails From the Edge', as it reminded me of my many years in the Marine Corps. Seldom did we stay in one place for more than two years. My smile, however, soon turned to a sad awareness as I looked back at the selfishness in my life. When reading this book, I realized the enormous problem it was for my wife who (most of the time) did all the packing and all of the hard work that I took for granted. I never once thought about the loneliness my wife felt living in a foreign country. I had my work, but she had nothing.

The relationship with the Houston housewife was nothing short of a miracle in this clever, honest, and original book. If you want to know what friendship is all about, this is a truly a delightful read. Both the good and the bad are brought out in this non-fiction story of true friendship. These two women are tough. They are true survivors. A must read book that will leave you laughing and crying.

Ms. Maguire's book is definitely a wake-up call to the many spouses of those who move to foreign countries. Military personnel and travel agents should recommend this book to all parties who intend to move their families to a foreign country.

Reviewed by award-winning author, Bobby Ruble, author of Have No Mercy and co-author with wife, Kam, of Black Rosebud: Have No Mercy II.

I don't know how the big publsihers can miss this one?
Emails From the Edge is the gritty and down to earth tale of two extraordinary women. REAL LIFE WOMEN!

From the first page you will be drawn into the lives of these two heroic people as they cope and adapt into their own private but very foreign worlds.
What is it like to be pulled from your very existance time and time again? Never making friends for more than a few months? How do you cope? How do you survive mentally as you move about, shifting households and family?
Unless you know the answers to these questions you need to read Emails From the Edge by the talented Kristie Leigh Maguire.
For the college student on their first time away from home to the housewife who has to follow her husbands job; this is the "How to" survival guide.

Two women who formed a bond and learned to live the expatriate lifestyle while drawing off of each others strengths. If Oprah does not read this book I will be shocked!

Order it now and get ready to learn things you have never dreamed of.

Some things are very private, diaries, phone calls, letters and emails between friends. Emails from the Edge is a most unusual book, it details the relationship through emails of two friends, Margie who is living in Japan while her husband works there, and Sandy who is living in Texas with all her family around her.

Margie finds it difficult to live in a place where she doesn't know the language, finds the culture so different to what she's used to. How would you feel to get lots of bills and you don't even know what they are for or for how much? There is no-one to talk to while her husband is out at work and she finds herself getting more and more depressed. Sandy comes to the rescue with almost daily emails of what life is like for her back in the "real world." In return, Margie writes about her time in Japan and other places.

A true story, the friendship between these two women shines from the page and you feel as if you've eavesdropped on a private conversation, but accidentally and then they smile at you and welcome you into that circle of friendship.

The writing is real and down to earth, as only emails to good friends can be.

An excellent read.

Reviewed by Annette Gisby, author of Silent Screams