Customer Reviews

Travel Writing

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Peter Ferry is a storyteller and his debut novel, "Travel Writing," is one terrific story. The novel's dedication is the first clue that Ferry has chosen to write something a little different to mark his first time out. It will not take long for alert readers to notice that the three people to whom the book is dedicated have the same names as three of its main characters, nor that the author himself is the novel's narrator. Soon enough, the reader is wondering what is real and what is not - and that is half the fun of "Travel Writing."

Fictional Peter Ferry (as well as real life Peter Ferry) is an English teacher who makes a few bucks on the side writing newspaper travel pieces. He is also a born storyteller and he motivates and inspires his high school students by example, often telling them on-the-fly stories in class, rather than by preaching the mechanics of writing. All in all, Ferry is pretty content with his life, but all of that changes one winter night when he witnesses a car crash that claims the life of a young Asian woman.

Only moments before her death, Ferry had noticed the woman's erratic driving before she pulled alongside him at a stoplight. The two make brief eye contact as Ferry realizes the woman is either too drunk or too ill to drive safely but before he can intervene she speeds away to her death. Realizing that his was the last face the woman would ever see, Ferry becomes haunted by his inaction, always wondering if he could have saved Lisa Kim's life by acting more quickly and decisively.

This is the story Peter Ferry chooses to tell his high school English class, a story of one man's personal obsession with the death of a woman he never knew in life but comes to know intimately after her death. Having failed to save her life, Ferry is determined to find out why she died. He is so obsessed with solving the mystery of Lisa Kim that he is soon neglecting his work and his live-in girlfriend to the degree that he is in danger of losing both. As Ferry comes closer and closer to the truth about what happened that winter night, readers will find themselves intrigued by the truths he uncovers.

But did any of this actually happen or is it all just an exercise being used by Peter Ferry to make a point about creative writing to his English class? Just about the time one begins to forget that Ferry is a writing teacher, the author yanks him back to his classroom to discuss the story with his young students. Further complicating things is the book's narrative structure. The story is told from the past to the present with flashbacks and related travel pieces interspersed throughout, a choice that further helps to blur truth and which leads to the novel's clever ending.

Did it happen? I found that I was not sure, and that I really did not care much, because I enjoyed the story for what it is, just as Mr. Ferry's English class is so intrigued by it. I did have great fun along the way trying to decide whether or not the story is just part of Mr. Ferry's lesson plan or if it really happened to him. But, in the end, despite all the fun readers will have with it, this is a book with a serious message about personal responsibility and how far that responsibility extends into the lives of perfect strangers.

"Travel Writing" is a remarkable first novel which, at least for now, moves into my 2009 Top Ten.

Peter Ferry, teacher and writer, offers his first novel, starring Peter Ferry, teacher and writer. When Ferry the character witnesses a traffic accident that kills a young woman he's never met, he grows increasingly entangled in her world. She becomes the object of his intense fascination, to the point that he alienates his friends, jeopardizes his job, and loses his career, and starts to lose his love. But then he discovers a secret somebody else has been dying to keep.

Hanging his story on this thin spine of psychological mystery, Ferry the author spins a complex yarn of a man whose lifelong struggle against responsibility comes into conflict with his soul yearning to grow up. The boundaries between author and story grow fuzzy, and the novel challenges you to guess how much of what you've just read is really fiction. The metanarrative becomes menacing when he starts to suggest that maybe there's more than a novel here.

I have to confess, I don't usually like metafiction. It's usually mere academic puffery from MFA candidates who want you to know what serious artists they are. Not so here. Ferry, whether character or writer, is a knot of conflict that only works itself out through storytelling. The only way he can decipher himself is by telling us his story. And the story he tells brings us into a life grown bizarre behind its revelations.

This difficult but rewarding novel probably won't become a breakout hit. The author menaces the audience too much for a mass following, and this story is so book-bound that it will never be made into a movie. But this is the kind of literature that makes me love reading. And it's the kind of book that publishers push out there because they love books. Smart, funny, grim, and surreal, this book will leave you scratching your head in the best possible way.

I loved this book. It's funny, thought-provoking, and like the title says, it's like traveling around the world from your chair. The meat of the story takes place in the Chicago area - it's part-drama, part-mystery/detective and part-love story. I highly recommend it!

This is a wonderful book about exploration of people, places, and the self. It leads the reader to places he or she may not have dreamed of when the cover was opened because, like the most memorable of books it makes one think not only about the characters but about oneself. In that way the reader becomes much like one of Ferry's students as he spins the tale of Lisa Kim. After I finished the book I ran across that wonderful Eliot quote from "Four Quartets." "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." It captured the feeling I had when I closed the book about the narrator and, perhaps, most of us. Get this book. It is a great treat.

The main narrative of this story, the hook that will snag many readers, deals with the death of a young Korean-American woman by the name of Lisa Kim. The car crash that claims Lisa Kim's life happens right in front of the story's main character, Pete Ferry, a school teacher and frequent contributor to The Chicago Tribune's Travel section, however, the details around that crash are not exactly clear cut.

Ferry discovers more about Lisa Kim after a moment of mistaken identity and quickly becomes pulled into the circumstances that surrounded her death. Here, something is not right, the pieces of the puzzle won't line up, and before long, Ferry's own life is being derailed as he tries to understand the mystery.

As odd as it may seem, a writer placing a version of himself in his own works is not such a stretch for those of us who have read books like City of Glass, or even seen the movie Adaptation; however, the skill that Ferry uses to confuse and blur the lines that link fact and reality is handled so well that several sections call into question the very nature of story and fiction.

And while there are several interludes that section off the main narrative in the forms of classroom discussions and travel logs, these breaks are often as engaging as the main narrative.

While the plot of the story does well to keep the reader turning the pages, the themes of Travel Writing are what make the book really shine. Covering everything from connection, loss and obsession to love, desire and infatuation, the novel travels as much as the main character, presenting the reader with an overall goal of learning how the book's asides all tie together.

As Ferry learns more about the world and more about himself through his travels and his interactions, he shows us both the terrible aspects of the world along with the good.

In addition to these thoughts on the world at large, Ferry also contemplates issues closer to home, such as relationships, want and jealousy, each topic changing his perception and overall outlook on life.

From the book: "I had made a decision to live every day not as if it were my last day, but as if it were my only day; not so that I would remember it in a year or even a month, but so that at the end of it when I lay down at night, I could say that I had not wasted it, not sleepwalked through it, that I had lived it."

What this story is primarily concerned with is the change that happens in a person who witnesses some terrible thing that they'll never be able to forget. From this, it goes a step further and adds the prospect of avenging that wrong, even if the process eats you alive.

While guiding its readers through this story, the style in which Travel Writing is written is easily accessible, yet the topics found in the novel are as deep and contemplative as they come, making the book all the more complex and ultimately an enjoyable read.

WOW, wish I had Mr. Ferry as my teacher for Creative Writing. This book keeps your interest. Jumps between real and illusion until you question yourself on what you see and hear real or not. Can't wait till his next novel comes out.

Picked this up at O'Hare (sorry, Amazon). Used to live in Chicago, knew some of the settings. Sure, I'm interested in teaching, the nature and devices of fiction, the relationship between truth and art, etc.

The writing is pellucid, if a bit plain, the story initially engrossing. The book does not promise to be a mystery, but the mystery at its heart is an interesting one. Flying through it.

When I got to the travelogues, I thought hmm, this somehow must relate to the author's/main character's obsession, this will be interesting. But each of them ultimately felt like pieces Mr. Ferry had sitting about, or had published with nowhere else to collect them. They brought the book to a halt. This ain't Moby Dick; observational asides with without an apparent (nor, as nearly as I could tell, a submerged) nexus with the action of the novel come across not as charming, but as self-consciously literary.

And when reality and fiction finally merge, in the book's climactic scene (it wasn't climactic enough -- the thing continues on to yet another travel snippet with a punchline before it comes to an end) -- well, it's trivial, and seems to be: "Storytelling isn't really the truth, but it sort of is, and does it matter?" The drama is missing; the author/main character didn't learn a thing during the course of this novel -- no, the author is intending to instruct us, and it feels lecturely throughout. (And this guy and his chums have lots, I mean lots, of sex with numerous partners. They don't learn much from that, either.)

So, after a promising beginning, it felt a little like one of those long jokes that you're praying will pay off, and ends up being an acceptable joke, but without that "aha" moment that the joketeller was hoping for.

So why do I give it four stars? I gotta tell you: I read it almost straight through, including the travelogues. Would I recommend it? Yeah, absolutely.

So maybe Mr. Ferry embedded something that reaches through to the heart, after all. I felt a little had when I closed it for the final time, but it was a pleasurable hadness -- like a magician picked me out of an audience and fooled me into thinking the damned bunny had disappeared.

Peter Ferry, narrator in Travel Writing, is a high school English teacher and part-time travel writer. In an effort to inspire his somewhat apathetic students, he tells them a story about an incident that happened to him on his way home. Peter was driving behind an obviously impaired driver. When they reached a stop light, there was a brief moment of eye contact with the stunning woman driver, then the other vehicle sped away and Peter witnessed the deadly crash of the other car and the death of its driver Lisa Kim. He believes he may have been able to prevent the car crash and embarks on a mission to discover Lisa Kim's history and what may have led to her accident. The mission soon turns to into an obsession which threatens to destroy his job and his relationship. Peter attends Lisa Kim's funeral. meets members of her family under false pretenses, searches for an ex-boyfriend, and investigates her doctor who seems to have somehow contributed to her death. The book not only tells the story of Peter's preoccupation, it also is s study into the disintegration of the relationship with his long-term girlfriend mixed with discussions with his friends and flashbacks to his some of his travels.

When Peter's students recognize the name of a counselor and some other characters, they ask Peter whether the story is true. Peter explains that some but not all of the elements are based on facts.

"I don't understand," says Nick.
"Well, it just works better that way," I say.
"I'm not sure I agree," says the girl whose hair is blue today, "and I definitely don't buy this hypnotism stuff. That sounds hokey to me. Sounds like Seinfeld or something."
"But that's the part that's true," I say. "Gene really does use hypnotism and he really did use it on me."
"Now let's see," says Nick. "You put something in that isn't true because it works better, and you put something in that doesn't work because it's true. I'm not sure you can have it both ways."
"Sure I can; it's my story," I say.

Sounds like a pretty straight-forward book. Then you realize that Peter Ferry, author of Travel Writing, is also a high school English teacher and part-time travel writer. This brings up the question - is the story of Lisa Kim based on an experience of the author? Did he actually jeopardize his relationships? Did he tell this story to one of his English classes.

Travel Writing is a truly creative work. I was caught up in the story and caught up in the question of how blurry is the line between fact and fiction.

Travel Writing grabbed my attention on the first page. The main character is named Pete Ferry, just like the author. One night, he sees a young girl die in a car accident. Upset that he couldn't prevent the crash (he noticed she was driving erratically), he tries to find out who she was and why she died that night.

In the high school where he teaches a writing class, Ferry describes the accident to his students, but then he says, "...maybe this never really happened, and I'm just telling you a story." The students play along and ask him what happens next.

The title of the book refers to Ferry's part-time career as a travel writer. The travel scenes are vivid, and you feel like you're there with him. But sometimes they interrupt the mystery just when it's unfolding. In spite of that, I highly recommend the book.

If you live in Evanston IL, you'll recognize landmarks, restaurants, and coffee shops ... even the road where the fatal accident takes place. That was a bonus for me!

I hope Peter Ferry writes more books.

As I begin to write each review, the first thing that comes to mind is whether or not I couldn't wait to get back to the book I'm reading each time I put it down. I wish I could get this feeling more than I do but I'm satisfied with the possible dozen or so times each year this situation will occur. Did it occur with Travel Writing? Sad to say it didn't. I'm so in the minority here, however, based on all of these other reviews. Not only did I not look forward to picking it up again but I actually couldn't wait to finish it and move on to all the other good books I have waiting here for me to read. That's right....John Irving's book just came out!!!

I know an argument can be made about why I just didn't stop reading it and move on to something else. I'd like to be able to do this but, once I start a book, I always finish it. This is why you'll see many reviewers with only four and five star reviews in their repetoire....they put down the books they don't like and, consequently, don't review them. It's also why many books here are actually rated higher than they should be because the ratings don't take into account all of the people who read a few chapters and decide that the book wasn't for them.

So why didn't I like it? I'm a very black and white person; very cut and dry. It either "is" or it "isn't". When an author writes a story that is perhaps true and perhaps not true, yet parts are definitely true while other parts are definitely not, he/she loses me. I don't like to play guessing games when I'm reading. I don't mind this when I'm reading a mystery/thriller and I know from the first page what I signed up for. That's fine with me. But this story within a story, whether it's real or not, just does not fly with me. The bottom line is that I don't like to be confused when I'm reading. Challenge me...yes!!! Confuse me...no!!!

Every other reviewer has already told the story about Peter Ferry, teacher/travel writer, who witnesses a car crash and begins to tell the story to his writing class. From that point on, the reader is not sure if it ever actually happened or if only part of it happened. It reminded me of Toni Morrison's books where you never really know what happens and, according to her, if you have to ask, she won't tell you anyway.

Since the author is also a travel writer (as is the narrator), the book is flooded with little paragraphs and chapters of travel snippets that bored me to death and had nothing to do with the story. As a matter of fact, they messed up the fluidity of the story as far as I was concerned.

I know others might feel I'm being a bit too critical but I tell it like it is....or at least how I feel it is. Now if that's "real" or "not real", that's for you to decide.