You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World [Paperback]

Gayle Forman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2006

In these eight interconnected travel stories, journalist Gayle Forman traces the trajectory from her relatively comfortable life in New York's Hell's Kitchen to her sometimes extreme--and extremely personal--experiences in some of the most exotic spots on earth

In this extraordinary memoir--now issued in paperback--Gayle Forman takes us with her to the mountain hideaways of Kazakhstan's Tolkien fanatics and inside the townships of South Africa's lost tribe of Israel. She introduces us to a wild assortment of characters: lovelorn Tongan transvestites, charismatic Tanzanian rap stars, precocious Cambodian street kids, out-of-work Dutch prostitutes. In the artful interplay of these eight lively, thoughtful stories, she reveals how all of these diverse lives--as well as our own--are being inextricably altered by the ever-shrinking world that we share. Because, she writes, "To forget the humanity in others is to risk forgetting one's own."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Kazakhstan, a dedicated group of Tolkien readers pretend to be the Hobbits of Middle Earth. In China, a doctor attempts to cure cancer by creating a comprehensive book of English slang. In Zanzibar, Vanilla Ice-influenced hip-hop is the reigning musical genre. Journalist Forman set off with her husband on a year-long international journey, determined to find these and other offbeat cultural tidbits. From Tonga to Amsterdam, Forman "planned to experience these exotic countries through the eyes of those on the margins... to see if our otherness would bind us." Her account is a richly woven narrative that highlights a single person or group of people from each country, whether the Lemba of South Africa (Jews descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel) or the Fakaletti of Tonga (not-quite male/not-quite female transvestites). Forman can be grating as she repeatedly claims her "Weird Girl" status; her book is similar to other "off-the-beaten-path" travel books. She sets her book apart, though, by sharing glimpses into her personal life. Traveling for a year with her husband is no honeymoon--at times the two seem on the verge of divorce--and while Forman doesn't tie up the loose ends of her relationship satisfactorily, those personal details give her memoir a center and put more at stake for Forman. Armchair travelers will be sated by these smart, well-written tales.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Forman's mistake, in this account of a year's globe-trotting with her husband, is to seek out self-consciously fringe topics—Tongan transvestites, Kazakh Tolkien nuts—in the hope that exoticism will prove enlightening. But her conclusions are so vapid ("Life, it turns out, is as big as you're willing to make it") as to call to mind Chesterton's quip that "travel narrows the mind." Like a voluble neighbor on a long flight, Forman tells us more about herself than we really want to know; a spat with her husband in the Far East makes one almost wish they'd break up for good. Elsewhere, though, she demonstrates a knack for getting interesting people to talk about themselves. The best chapter, set in the relatively unexotic world of Amsterdam's red-light district, examines the difficulties that legalization has brought. One madam complains of being forced to close because her ceilings were not of regulation height.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books (November 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594865515
• ISBN-13: 978-1594865510
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,085,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan and Elle in the US. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and you learn something!, May 31, 2005

By 

Dina Wampold (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World (Hardcover)

I love to be entertained by books that also teach you something along the way. Gayle did a great job of finding and exploring the obscure in every country she visited, grabbing you with her writing and taking you on her adventure.
Gayle takes you on a ride geographically and emotionally as she and her husband traverse the far corners of the world AND their relationship. I ended the book feeling like I knew the world a little better and was a little smarter about relationships as well!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You can get there from here, May 18, 2005

By 

Farah Janjua - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World (Hardcover)

Globalization is one of the most common words used these days and the very same word has been addressed by Gayle Forman in this brilliant piece of work. But Forman has provided the world with a perspective on globalization not many tend to consider and reach out to. That perspective is that although globalization is changing the material scenario of the world and is aiming largely at the world market economy and its impact on our now 'tiny' globe, it must move forward and end with accomplishing a compassionate connection between its inhabitants.

You Can't Get There From Here is a book with a writer who is sometimes blatantly honest yet is totally empathetic towards everything and everyone she encounters along her path. It's open (with the writer sharing her most personal thoughts and events)yet sweet and gentle in a modest manner. Very witty yet non-judgemental.

The most powerful message conveyed in the book is that every place and person on earth has a unique value and most of the time all that is required to realize that value and learn something meaningful from it is to look beyond oneself and beyond what the exterior seems to be.

Everything about Forman's book is human and universal because her words are truthful and from the heart.It is a complete narration that leaves the reader satiated because there is nothing missing it its content.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better Gayle than I, April 26, 2005

By 

Casey Ellis (Los Altos, California) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: You Can't Get There from Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World (Hardcover)

Gayle Forman and I occupy the far ends of the Bell Curve of travelers. She goes to Paris and never visits the Louvre; I often head to that glorious depository of art as soon as I've unpacked. But when it comes to travel books, I don't want to read about visits to the Louvre, I want an author who ventures to places I'm NEVER going to go (high on that list: Kazakhastan)and then tells me of adventures there with insight and wit. This is an absolutely marvelous book. I hated to see it end.