Customer Reviews

Paper Airplanes in the Himalayas: The Unfinished Path Home (West and the Wider World)

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

 

 

First of all, I gave this book 4 stars because I would buy it again and read it again if I had the choice. Above anything else, that is (in my opinion) the best way to score a book. Anything that I say below, should be weighed against the fact that I really did enjoy the book.

This book seems to have two audiences. First of all, there are the missionary kids, especially those of us that attended Murree Christian School (the school that the author writes about). I attended MCS for about as long as the author did (1978-87) and I appreciated the first half of the book with the stories of being a kid at MCS. For you MCSers out there, I think that you will appreciate his memories and find how similar they were to yours. However, I can't relate to a few of the things that happened to the author and at the point where he left MCS his life followed a completely different path that I can't even imagine. In the second half of the book, the author describes the hell that his life becomes and how with (maybe too much) self analysis and psycho-babble, he is able to see himself as healed again. To me, it is not clear at the end of the book if he is really healed or if he is just currently at a temporary point of emotional stability. He still seems plenty bitter to me. Anyway, I doubt if the MCS people that I knew would enjoy this much self-centered psycho-analysis. Also, I think that people who follow the religious beliefs that are generally held/taught at MCS would be offended by some of the conclusions that the author comes to in the end.

The second audience for this book will probably be the self-help, new age, "I'm OK, you're OK" types. I don't consider myself to be a member of this group, but I don't know if they will really find it all that inspiring (see above) and it is too bad that they probably won't understand all of the MCS specific stuff that we alumni understand.

Any way, as I said at the top, I did enjoy the book even though the last few chapters were a little hard to get through. I think the author did a good job of capturing some of the good things about MCS, while making it clear that it was not the ideal place that we were led to believe when we attended it.