Not Where I Started From [Paperback]

Kate Wheeler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 19, 1997

Kate Wheeler's stories feature peripatetic Americans who seek love or enlightenment - or both - in far-flung corners of the globe. A startling mixture of gentle irony, mischievous humor, and unexpected danger marks the paths of all these characters as they follow their circuitous routes toward happiness. As THE NEW YORK TIMES said, "Wheeler has a capacity for compressing the insights of cross-cultural dislocation into deliciously memorable epiphanies."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Many of Wheeler's protagonists in this hypnotic debut collection of 10 stories are Americans in exotic cultures, seeking love or spiritual enlightenment. In "Improving My Average," a lonely rich American girl raised in Colombia attempts to rescue her servant from an unscrupulous fiance, only to discover the abyss between her own privileged life and theirs. In "Manikarnika," a computer graduate student on leave in India learns that her abusive father has committed suicide and finds an emotional anchor in an unpretentious guru. Wheeler, a one-time Buddhist nun in Burma who is now an O. Henry and Pushcart Award-winning author based in Massachusetts, does not spin gauzy New Agey scenarios but rather writes smart, tough-minded tales full of verve, wit, irony and a deft human touch. Her nervy women break out of self-made traps, whether it's a Kansas dishwasher who runs away from her domineering, older husband ("Judgment"), a transplanted New Yorker who is down-and-out in Miami's Little Havana ("Mr. Peanut"), or a neurotic dancer who can't get over her married ex-lover in Paris ("My Most Recent, Perfect Knight"). A highly original, delightful writer, Wheeler is on a par with Paul Theroux or Doris Lessing in her serendipitous explorations of cultural collisions.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Two stories in Wheeler's impressive first collection take locus from her own experience as a (now disrobed) Buddhist nun in Burma--``Under the Roof'' and ``Ringworm''--and these have an unstrained shapeliness born of intimate knowledge. Here and in other stories, too, Wheeler's spiritual pilgrims aren't airheads, not particularly ``lost'' in the tangible world; nor do they set themselves up for the disappointments they meet. Just the right blend of realism (``Over here''--referring to India--``causality was cooked up in one's blind spot'') and ardor informs their religious dreams. But this is due less to the inherent subject matter of asceticism, gurus, and inner vows than to Wheeler's fine general knack for what the Russian formalists used to call ``making it strange.'' Her stories of an American girl's life growing up in South America--``Improving My Average,'' ``Urbino''--have the same spiky shifts of tone, and are thus allowed to seem more random and convincing than the ordinary culture-transplant story. Wheeler's wise eye and style--at times comparable to Mavis Gallant's in effect--are so sharp they sometimes get away from her (``If only I could have photographed the jellied chunk of time I spent under Miami Aiport, waiting for the rental agency's minibus. Concourses coiled overhead like the labyrinth of an enormous cement ear....The light, fibrillating green fluorescence was interrupted by slashes of void between which too tan women walked past toward imminent reunions...'')--but letting too little sneak by is no literary sin, especially in a debut collection. Strong, messy, frequently indelible work by a new talent. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 19, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395860326
• ISBN-13: 978-0395860328
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,062,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Confused women with whom it's hard to empathize, December 21, 1997

By 

Constant Weeder "batttman" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Not Where I Started From (Paperback)

The stories--Not Where I Started From, by Kate Wheeler, are strange and modern. They take place all over the world, where the author has been and has detailed knowledge: India, Burma, Thailand, France, New York, Buenos Aires, and one in the south somewhere. I was impressed by the colorful and poetic use of language: "Miss Bi Chin's water heart flows in uncontrollable sympathy toward the monk." "Inside my body, anticipation's orchestra tuned up: deep thrills on cellos, reedy squeaks." "I lay back and watched the live oaks slip past, their crowns like lung shadows on the X-ray sky." He used her first name "as he'd used mine, like an unpleasant forefinger pointing at her heart. Or at her ego, to be precise and fair." "By the time I heard his tale, it had been retold so many times that it had flattened into myth, the verbal equivalent of a mural on an Egyptian tomb." "Squiggly rays go from holy man to Edward." "He didn't touch me, just wiped his heavy wingtips on the loon's head mat, his eyes moving from side to side like peeled eggs in a jar of oil." But these are troubling stories of women at loose ends, striving to find faith in weird religious practices with odd men, or bonding with inappropriate women, or having numberless affairs that leave them baffled and unfulfilled. None of them have satisfactory relationships with their parents, some are runaways, some throw away promising careers for the slightest of reasons. The author, ordained in Burma as a Buddhist nun according to the cover blurb, knows whereof she speaks when she writes sarcastically of the east, but one wonders why her characters have allowed themselves to get into the fixes they have. Though they emerge changed in almost every story, the reader finds it hard to sympathize with them. Still, the book is a great read

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight to the ascetic mind, September 25, 2000

By 

Spencer Day (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Not Where I Started From (Paperback)

I stumbled on this book and bought it because of the title, never imagining that it would be so entertaining, full of the intrigue of spiritual inquiry gone slightly haywire. It is a series of short stories dealing with the oddities surrounding various young people bent on finding enlightenment but who also find peculiar twists and turns in their quest. Not always complimentary to the messianic guru types, either.

Read it!

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, March 2, 2000

By 

Ledia Carroll - See all my reviews

This review is from: Not Where I Started From (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite books. Glad to see she finally has another one out.