In this lyrical, poetic, and charmingly funny book, Laurie Gough drives from Ontario to California reflecting on a life spent travelling in search of new experiences and familiar sensations. Heading towards a half-remembered cave on the Pacific coast where her younger, more adventurous self once stayed, she recalls adventures in Sumatra, the Yukon and many places in between and wonders what compels her to keep moving through life while everyone else has found a place to belong.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Lauded by TIME magazine as one of the new generation of intrepid young female travel writers Laurie Gough is author of Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey, shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and silver medal winner of Foreword magazine' s Travel Book of the Year in the U.S. Seventeen of her stories have been anthologized in various literary travel books, including Salon.com's Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance; AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds; Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write from the Road; Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure; and A Woman's World. She has written for Salon.com, the LA Times, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Outpost, Canadian Geographic, numerous literary journals, and has got lost on buses in so many countries that she has decided to take up hitch-hiking again when she is 72.
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More About the Author
Lauded by Time magazine as 'one of the new generation of intrepid young female travel writers,' Laurie Gough is author of the Kiss the Sunset Pig, and Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey, shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and silver medal winner of ForeWord Magazine's Travel Book of the Year in the US. Eighteen of her stories have been anthologized in various literary travel books, including Salon.Com's Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance; AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds; Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write From the Road; Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I know Why: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure; and More Sand in My Bra. She has written for salon.com, The L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Vancouver Sun, Outpost, Canadian Geographic, The Daily Express, and In London, among others. She lives in Wakefield, Quebec with her husband and little boy and still travels every chance she gets.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Intrepid Traveller,
This review is from: Kiss the Sunset Pig (Paperback)
Laurie Gough is an intrepid traveller with a youthful exuberance for adventure. I realize, though, that no matter what one's age, some people are born with wanderlust and have a need to travel the world. The interesting thing is, travellers always return home. That's what Gough does. She's been to thirty countries, hitchhiking thousands of miles by herself though fourteen of them. But she always returns to her hometown of Guelph, Ontario in Canada.
At the beginning of Kiss the Sunset Pig, Gough sets off for California from Guelph in a "blue, beat-up mini Ford Bronco" she calls Marcia. To help with driving and expenses, she picks up a travelling companion named Debbie, whom she has met through an ad and, before the trip begins, has only spoken to on the phone. Debbie gets dropped off in St. Louis, Missouri, at the home of a boyfriend she has never met face to face. "Sometimes I think I'm still looking for an axis," Gough writes early on in her journey. After reading her book, I think the axis may be the wanderlust. It's who she is. For a person with wanderlust, there is no perfect place to live. A place may seem ideal, for a time, but really it's just a base at which to prepare oneself for the next adventure. Reading about her encounters with strange and wonderful people is frightening at times (for the reader and for her), but I realize travelling with a companion or in a group, as I usually do, one is not open to the same exciting possibilities. Travelling solo, Gough finds herself talking to strangers more readily as she's more open and more herself. "That's the thing about travelling: it's like peeling away a layer of yourself, exposing yourself to the world so it can expose itself to you". The structure of the book is an interesting one that works extremely well. (She did the same in her first book, Kite Strings of the Southern Cross, which I highly recommend.) Rather than write a book of travel stories in chronological order, Gough reflects on previous journeys as she drives across the United States in a car that needs lots of garage visits along the way. One of those reflections is the Greek island of Naxos. There Gough created a temporary home under a small bamboo wind shelter on the beach. Her backpack went missing for a time and to ease her panic, she looked at the "dependable milky rock" of the moon. Gough realized things like that didn't matter "in the great scheme of the universe" (she had her passport and money), and I realize too, as a traveller, one needs to practice non-attachment. Gough describes Greece beautifully as a "land where myth and reality swirl around each other in a luminous haze." Yet she needed to move on, "to see the rest of the world." One summer, Gough hitchhiked to the Yukon, 3,000 miles from Guelph. She says hitchhiking is "always a surprise study of human beings." Her travelling companion Kevin told her of his own world adventures. His advice was "You have no idea what's in store for you, but if you let yourself go along with the flow of the unknown and accept whatever happens, things seem to work out". The "exotic detours" of which Gough writes don't all have happy endings. Her teaching job in Kashechewan in Canada's sub-Arctic ended after only three months with Gough defeated and exhausted by the chaos of a third-grade class. A trip to Jamaica with her sister ended quickly, as Gough likes to stay with locals while her sister prefers fancy hotels. Gough is full of questions about where she belongs. Those questions don't at all detract from the book; they help us relate. After all, travel is about looking for oneself, and as travel-book readers, we get to reflect on similar questions. On her trip to California, Gough plays Joni Mitchell's "California" that includes the phrase "kiss the sunset pig." She carries a tattered notebook called "Cave Journal" and would like to find that cave on the Pacific again, where she spent some time thirteen years previously. Along with her questions and her longing, Gough has a healthy sense of humour about her encounters along the way. She describes a town on the Great Plains called Grainfield as the "size of a bath mat." At an earlier age, Gough described herself as "still on my way to everywhere." She has learned that travel can mean "hours, even days of despair, rain, heatwaves, snow, mosquitoes, late trains, no trains, followed by a single moment of dazzling elation. It was those single moments one tended to recall." Gough makes some realizations at the end of her California trip that I don't want to reveal here. But I would say, even though she is older and perhaps wiser, I still see her as on her way to everywhere. Gough has married since the stories written about in her book and has a baby son. They divide their time between a farmhouse outside of Guelph, Ontario, and a Quebec village. Seventeen of her stories have been anthologised in various literary travel books, including Salon.com's Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance and Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write from the Road. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Outpost, Canadian Geographic and numerous literary journals. by Mary Ann Moore for Story Circle Book Reviews www.storycirclebookreviewsorg reviewing books by, for, and about women
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Journey: Heart and Mind, Body and Soul,
By Anastasia (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kiss the Sunset Pig (Paperback)
When I opened 'Kiss the Sunset Pig' I was expecting a travel book, which it is ... and a great one at that. What I wasn't expecting was how much it would touch my soul. I sat, riveted, as I took a journey not only around the world, but across thoughts, hopes, dreams. Anyone who's ever questioned whether, with the whole world to choose from, they're living their lives in the best place or whether they've filled their lives to the very best of their ability, will find a resonating spirit in this book.
As Laurie Gough makes her way from Canada and across America she hopes not only to settle happily in California, but to find the coastal cave that she lived in for six nights, years ago. But the search is not so much for the cave itself, as for the more free-spirited (she believes) girl that lived there. As she drives, she recalls previous travels in the Greek islands, the Yukon, Jamaica, Sumatra, and Seoul, to name a few. These tales can't fail to inspire. Her bravery alone, traveling solo through often uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, situations is humbling to say the least. But it's this bravery she feels has been lost and she hopes to rekindle by finding her cave. Several times the author seemed to wander into places I thought only existed in my daydreams. Some were so uncanny they made me gasp. Since childhood I have wanted a glass-walled bedroom perched on the top of a house, entirely surrounded by trees. I clapped my hands in delighted envy when the author set up home in just such a room ... and in a Californian Redwood forest at that. These instances were some of the most poignant for me - the fact that daydreams can so easily be reality if you go out and make them so ... that really hit home. The travel stories are touching, humourous, enchanting, and filled with travel's usual mix of discomfort, frustration, alarm, and achingly beautiful encounters. All are told with the author's clear natural gift for portraying the lightness and the depth in every situation. So if the idea of sleeping in a coastal cave, inside a Californian Redwood, on a Mediterranean beach, or on the banks of the remote Yukon river lights something intangible inside, I wholeheartedly recommend you read 'Kiss the Sunset Pig' and let inspiration rain over you.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Could Relate,
This review is from: Kiss the Sunset Pig (Paperback)
As a young female traveler, Laurie has a unique perspective. I felt like I was reading a letter from my best friend. Adventure and girl talk. Being attracted to a cute guy until he reprograms your car radio to country music. Fights with your sister who doesn't understand you and makes a lot more money than you do. Asking yourself why you are travelling in the middle of nowhere while everyone else has stable lives. Taking jobs, traveling to Jamaica at the drop of a hat, camping in a cave along the beach. Thinking, writing, dreaming. Searching for something. Seeing great beauty in nature. Taking chances and living life deeply. Not many people can write like that.
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