Customer Reviews

Without a Guide: Contemporary Women's Travel Adventures

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

 

 

It's no coincidence that the women who wrote these selections do not belong to the travel writing genre per se. The essays are honest and are a picture of realistic travel. It's not the typical travel stuff that sells--not the waving palm trees and lush tropical islands--it's the nit and grit. What a relief. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me until I read this book. My travels just did not fit in with the Shangri-la, all-enlightening journeys that mainstream travel authors write about to appeal to an American audience. This is a great book, though I admit, it won't necessarily conjour up pictures of paradises that don't exist.

Just today found my lost copy of Without a Guide. Lost for 10 years in a packed box, it had been a gift I'd treasured before heading off to parenthood and a series of moves.

I could not remember the title. Could not remember the authors. Could remember the stories, however; and have spent hours typing in various keywords on Google trying to identify the lost book. Now, with the original copy back in hand, I came to Amazon to buy more and found a mediocre review that requires a response. "2 stars" and whinging about issues of gender while regarding this little book?! Get a complete Margaret Atwood anthology and be done with it.

This is not just a set of travel stories, nor is it a femlit collection. It is a Canadian anthology of short stories written by female authors that happen to regard foreign places. It is a brilliant collection and I'm so glad to have found it again. Some stories are poignant, some are incredibly funny. The first person characters and places stay with you (truly). My favs were Through a Barren Land by Graham; In Fez without a Guide by Govier; and the haunting, haunting Highway to the Black Mountain by Sidhwa.

This is a group review, and we are far from agreement. The person who recommended this book loved it because she loves to travel and approaches travel as an adventure. For her, reading the book was like going to another country where she didn't understand the culture but was transported there by the stories. However, the remaining three members of the group read this book from a different frame of reference, and they had less favorable reactions. These readers admit they probably had higher expectations of quality from authors of this caliber. From a literary standpoint, many of the stories didn't measure up. In more than a few of the stories, the writers do not provide adequate context and detail. The stories did not transcend the level of travelogue to become a more meaningful exploration of either the place or the author's experience there. Furthermore, the issue of gender as it relates to travel is not clearly articulated. In these ways the editor's goal for the book were not met. However, there were several stories we liked: Robyn Davidson's "Alone Across the Outback," Ysenda Maxtone Graham's "Through a Barren Land," Wendy Law-Yone's "The Year of the Pigeon," and "Highway to the Black Mountains" by Bapsi Sidhwa. These stories moved us, providing more details and reflection on the meaning of the experience to the writer. Through our discussion of this book, we realized how difficult it is to write insightfully about travel. It was interesting to us to read about different places and different perspectives, but we wondered if there should be more to travel writing than this.