Customer Reviews

Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile (Modern Library)

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

 

 

This is a 2006 reissue of a book written more than ten years earlier, and in her introduction to the reissue the author describes it as a young woman's book, but she is too kind: a rather silly and ignorant book would be more accurate. The central problem is that she doesn't seem to have decided what sort of book she was trying to write. A travel book may fall into one of three genres: a tourist guide, an analysis of the political and social character of the country visited, or an account of the adventures experienced by the author. Sara Wheeler doesn't appear to have had any adventures, so the third of these is a non-starter, but her book fails in both of the other two as well: it has too few descriptions of the places visited and too many accounts of the conversations she had about politics to succeed as a tourist guide; as a social and political analysis it has much too much chit-chat. In any case case her knowledge of Chile is very superficial -- the kind of thing she would have heard from her political exile friends in London before she went, rather than things she saw with her own eyes. One has the impression that her main objective was to confirm the ideas she had before going to Chile, and within Chile she stayed (amongst other places, of course) at the British Embassy and on the estates of very wealthy people, where no doubt, she was able to confirm her prejudices. She tells us, for example, that the Chilean population is riddled with anti-semitism: she could easily have picked up that idea from talking with her wealthy friends, but as a description of the population as a whole it is complete nonsense.

Who could visit Lake Chungura in the far north of Chile without finding anything at all to say about its beauty? Who could pass through the Region de los Lagos in the south, but refrain from stopping because she didn't think it would tell her much about Chile? Sara Wheeler, that's who. She mentions (correctly) that the Region de los Lagos is a favourite place for Chilean people to go on vacation, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to her that seeing where ordinary people go on vacation and what they do there would tell her more about the ordinary life of the country than visiting a military base in the Antarctic.

All in all a very disappointing book, with very little of interest to say.

Since I did a similar trip to the one in this book a few years ago, I was curious to see whether Sara and I also had the same experience. We didn't.

Whereas I just left home, Sara apparently first spent much time learning Spanish and gathering a network of contacts in Chile, including a number of official tourist offices that gave her free or cheap accommodation and transportation, very briefly mentioned here and there. Her contacts in Santiago, some at the British Embassy and some filthy rich families, Chile's de facto aristocracy, gives her access to interesting people and a level of luxury that "normal" travellers seldom encounter.

So reading the book is not the best way to figure out what you can expect to see and do on your own trip through Chile. Nevertheless there's a lot of background information about the country which may be useful to you. Also because she did her trip in the early 1990s, so a LOT has changed since then. All the destinations she mentions are still very much open to tourism, and you get a general idea of what they are like. I was disappointed that she only spent half a day in Torres del Paine, which to me was the most beautiful spot in the country. Also, she goes to "Chilean Antarctica", but there's not much of value to be gathered from reading her account of it. She only spent one day there, being guided by Chilean officials in and around a tiny settlement.

Sometimes she's funny in a very British manner, but it rarely lasts more than one sentence at a time. One of the other reviewers appears to find Sara rather promiscuous, going off with one man after the other on, well, overnight adventures to remote places. I often travel like that, and although it may seem like a stupid/crazy thing to do to some people, travelling in certain regions often means suddenly sharing a car/tent/meal with people you just met the day before. Although I'm sure there must have been short-term romance in the air at times, I certainly don't think less of Sara for not "admitting" it in her book. It just wouldn't add any value to the tale.

I disagree with the other reviewer's comments who felt he had to slog through the book waiting for it to payoff. I thoroughly enjoyed Sara Wheeler's writing on Chile and reccomend this book to anyone who has traveled to Chile or is contemplating a trip.

I started reading her book at the end of a 2-week adventure in Chile and many of her comments and thoughts resonated with my own experiences in Chile. I hated to leave the country and its beauty behind, but her book allowed me to retain and relive the magic of my own trip for another week+ as I savored her writing.

I eagerly snatched up this book, as there aren't that many armchair travel books about Chile. Unfortunately I just got bogged down with this one (twice!) and couldn't finish it, and I'm an avid reader who can slog through most any book. Though I wasn't expecting or even hoping for the liveliest of writing, I found it dull in both presentation and choice of material. Too bad. Two stars for choosing an interesting, beautiful country to write about.

This was one of the most delightful travel books ever! Not only do you get a glimpse of the entire country, from north to south, but you get a real social feel for class differences between the oligarchy and the poor. The author has a great sense of humor, which is always a plus.

To accompany Sara Wheeler on her journey through Chile, from the norhern desert to the icy tip of Antarctica, it's best
to pack a good map as well as a Spanish and English dictonary. It's easy to get lost. Is she still in the Andean foothills or did she double back to Azapa valley? She hitchhikes here and
there, with questionable companions, giving little thought to the readers who must follow along.

Wheeler is quite capable of lyrical writing. When she desrbes the five-storey tenement inhabited by friends. one can almost smell the garbage spilling from the plastic bags. However, such writing is rare. Too often she substitutes ten dollar words for real insight. It's hard to get excited about the Island of Quinchao described as "green and undulating, with an occasional excrecence of shingle-tiled extravagance."

Wheeler has little knack for what might interest readers. She wastes several pages on a tedious visit with policemen that ends in a silly prank involving a stuffed beaver while devoting barely a line to the tantalizing prospect of obtaining water from sea mist.

Historical and political events are inserted here and there like
the mud puddles she encounters - and are just as clear. Isabelle Allende's novels were the first to whet my appetite for Chile. Unfortunately, Wheeler nearly killed my desire to travel there.

On page 264 Mark, a fisherman, says of the far southern Elventh
Region 'Civilization is a thin veneer down here.' Wheeler's
book is a thin veneer over the country. Chile deserves a
writer with the skill to dig deeper into it's soul.

My entire book club hated this book. We all found the literary tone novice and the writing choppy and uninteresting. This is once case where pictures would have added a great deal. TERRIBLE.

This is one of those books that you keep reading for the promise of things to come...but it never delivers. The idea of accompanying the writer on her travels from north to south in "a thin country" is a compelling one. Unfortunately, the writing is not.

The writer spends a great deal of the book writing about the trials and travails in getting from point A to point B, never fully focusing on the beauty of the destination or the people. How can you write about a Chile and fail to convey the sense of incomparable beauty that most travelers see?

Now, I understand that there are travel writers who write about the journey and not the destination. So this could have been one of those humorous, roll-with-the-punches travel tales. But it wasn't that either. Instead,the journey stories were tedious and sounded a lot like complaining.

To the book's credit, a great deal of Chilean history is interspersed throughout the book, but this, too, ends ups sounding like a high school textbook. Prosaic and repetitive, the history offered never comes to life.

But I hate to give up on a book, so I slogged through 3/4 of it, riding along from the northern reaches of Atacama all the way to Antarctica. And, then, this:

"Each country transports its culture to the bottom of the world when it sets up in Antarctica - the good and the bad. In Bellinghausen the piles of rubbish, the acres of mud, the puffy faced men with silver teeth, the ghostly outlines of the metal letters CCCP which had been clumsily jimmied off the doors, the abandoned machinery of failed scientific projects, the one minuscule and inadequate Lada - well, they were Russian all right."

Up until now I've generally thought of most travelers as an enlightened bunch, people who can see beyond cultural stereotypes...but this writer managed to cram every available negative Russian stereotype into one telling sentence. Telling, because it revealed more about the writer, in my opinion, than Russian culture.

And, come to think of it, there were quite a few negative comments about the Chilean people as well. They were frequently referred to as insecure and self-obsessed.

This is when I decided to throw in the towel. This was one journey I no longer wanted to participate in.

Sara Wheeler is able to verbalize her experiences with such engaging details that the reader is traveling with her in every adventure along the way. Though I've seen documentaries of Chile, this little volume gives the complete picture!

Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile (Modern Library)A very intertaining journal of travels through Chile.