Give Me the World [Hardcover]

Leila Hadley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1999

Thus Leila Hadley, twenty-five years old, divorced, restless, bored with her succesful career, set off for the Far East with her six-year-old son for an adventure that would last a lifetime. Now available for the first time in many years, Give Me the World is the classic memoir of a mother and son's unforgettable trip around the world -- to Manilla and Hong Kong, Siam and Singapore, India and Damascus, and on around the world. Told with a remarkable sense of emotion and observation, it is an evocative record of what meets the eye and heart of the traveler. A timeless and moving personal story,

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This travelogue about the mystery-shrouded Far East is a must-read book. However, there are hazards in doing so. Originally published in 1958, Give Me the World clutters up the tidy notion that women in the '50s were all Donna Reed clones. Leila Hadley, a 25-year-old divorcée with a plum PR position in Manhattan tossed aside conventionality and shipped out to Hong Kong--her 6-year-old son in tow. Hooking up with characters from scholars and mystics to a quartet of American sailors, she traveled to locales such as Ceylon, Bombay, Bangkok, and Delhi, sailing much of the way on a schooner on which she was a bona fide shipmate.

Her danger-filled, 18-month trek is remarkable, but it's her skill at observing details and capturing them on paper, creating a dreamy world that plays to all senses, that makes her memoir extraordinary. Of a Bombay street, she writes: "The women floated through the traffic like butterflies. The men ... leaped and darted, tentatively jumping forward and back in the path of onrushing motorcars, cyclists and oxcarts. Rickety gharries hurtled past driven by whip-cracking turbaned charioteers." Whether writing of food, rituals, or topography--"the mazing side streets were soft and muddied by the monsoon rains"--Hadley unleashes images so rich you can't help thinking that if everyone wrote like this, we wouldn't need TV. Like TV, Give Me the World is habit-forming: you ignore pressing work simply to curl up with this intoxicating memoir. When asked what's new, you may answer: "Well, today Leila Hadley stumbled into an opium den with a camera, and someone chased her out with a knife!" or, "Leila nearly died from a dust storm that gave her a fever of 107, but she survived and met Indira Gandhi." You may sniff at the books of other travel writers, as though they're phonies who aren't even trying.

In short, this is a wonderful book filled with such luxurious prose and so many cultural insights and wild experiences that you finish it feeling enriched and realizing that Hadley has set a standard for travel writing--and traveling--that few, including her ancestor Boswell, can match. --Melissa Rossi

From Publishers Weekly

In the 1950s, Hadley (A Journey with Elsa Cloud), then a disaffected 25-year-old New Yorker, set off to see the globe with her six-year-old son. This memorable book, out of print for more than a quarter century, records in clear, attentive, deliberately personal prose Hadley's impressions ofAand misadventures inAHong Kong, Manila, Bangkok and Singapore, for starters. The emotional core of the book emerges when Hadley signs on to the four-man schooner California, and so learns about seamanship and camaraderie. Hadley, her son, the men of the schooner and their big dog make their way across the waters to Malaysia, where Hadley witnesses Thaipusam, the Tamil festival of repentance and body-piercing. A voyage ensues to the South Pacific islands, where "the first European lady to set foot on the shores of Nancowry" observes beautiful polychromatic corals, bored Indian traders and the "plump and pleasant-looking" queen. In India, Hadley encounters Buddhist ascetics, ancient spires, the Taj Mahal andAdisarminglyAthe young Indira Gandhi: "Her toenails were unblemished and smooth, glossily pink like the inside lip of a seashell." Pakistan, Dubai, Iraq, Lebanon and Malta complete the remarkable odyssey. Offering both an impressive panorama of Asia in the '50s, and a briskly engaging account of self-discovery, Hadley's memoir strikingly anticipates the current genre of women's adventure-travel books, and stands with the best of them. B&w photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1St Edition edition (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312198884
• ISBN-13: 978-0312198886
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,334,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful! In a league of its own!, June 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Give Me the World (Hardcover)

Having read a number of respected contemporary travel writers, I now regard Leila Hadley as the absolute finest. This book, about her travels to the Far East in the 1950's, is a gem! Move over Paul Theroux, Peter Mayle, Frances Mayes and Bill Bryson. With her mesmerizing style and wild tales, Leila Hadley is in a class of her own. A must-read book of a real life adventuress!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll feel like you're there, August 14, 2005

By 

Carolyn Rampone "Carolyn D'Amico Rampone" (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Give Me the World (Adventura Books) (Paperback)

Leila Hadley is one of the most descriptive writers of our time. Her words leap off the page and take you inside the story to enjoy her travels, right alongside her. "Give Me the World" is so much more than a travel log or journal. Ms. Hadley invites you along as her guest and urges you to see and feel what she has experienced, to be a part of her journey. You come away with an intimate knowledge of the Far East, as much as if you had seen it all yourself. I enjoyed my time in Bombay,Bangkok, and Singapore and recommend it to anyone who has a spirit of adventure. "Give Me the World" was an experience not to be missed.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Word pictures, May 11, 2000

By 

Barbara Levinson "BLWriter" (Azusa, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Give Me the World (Hardcover)

This book is so packed with visual images and sensuality that I could open the book to any page, any paragraph and find poetry and description so graphic it makes my expensive camera obsolete. Her vocabulary is intense and her respect for her readers intelligence challenges me to read nothing but quality. A remarkable book. I wonder how her son, Kippy, now regards that journey. It certainly changes my notions about the fifties woman. Whew! Barbara Levinson