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Summary
Summary
On the eve of her sixtieth birthday, Nan Watkins decided to embark on the around-the-globe trip she had always dreamed of--a trip she would take alone. Having endured both the dissolution of her thirty-year marriage and the devastating death of her twenty-three-year-old son, the author resolved to follow a solo path east across Europe and Asia to renew connections with old friends and explore foreign lands and cultures. Over adventure-filled weeks and months, what began as a trip of discovery transformed itself into a powerful journey of the spirit, touched by sorrow but buoyed by the pure pleasure of travel. Watkins considers the issues particular to a woman living and traveling alone and writes with great insight about the complexities of global development and the changing role of women in non-Western cultures. Ultimately, this rich and beautifully rendered chronicle, which takes Watkins from the lonesome, rugged coast of Ireland to the bustling streets of Katmandu to the majestic Rajasthan desert of western India, is a testimony to a woman's determination to overcome great loss with joy and passion.
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
As though she had taken a vow to awareness, Watkins, a musician and travel essayist, pays attention to the everyday elements as well as the grand themes in her globe-girdling journey. At the age of 60, Watkins takes a trip around the world, to clean out the cobwebs and keep herself fresh. She has traveled before, so she is comfortable enough on the road, and she has served as a host family for numerous students studying abroad, so she has contacts aplenty to soften her landings at such outposts as Nepal and New Delhi. Watkins has a talent for expressing both innocence and worldliness, a combination that gives her words the weight of an Old Soul with the clarity that can come from experience in life. Certainly, she knows what impresses and pleases and challenges her. She can speak with sureness of her love for James Joyce as she walks the streets of Zurich or of the breath-catching beauty of the Taj Mahal, where it stands sadly wreathed in foul air beside a polluted river. Without a lot of finger-pointing and lecturing, Watkins conveys a strong moral compass: "The rich people of the world . . . need to sacrifice our superfluous luxuries that are robbing the earth and depriving the poor." Words like these come convincingly, for she has witnessed firsthand and across cultures the deleterious effects of such waste. And Watkins's writings on her own circumstances--triggered by some sight or sound or memory--are restrained and polished with reflection, whether the subject is the pleasure of silence she learned as a member of a Quaker family, or a mother's most terrible plaint, losing a son, gone in an instant: "And, oh, I had not been there to comfort him in his dying as I had been present to hold him in my arms at his birth." A time-honoring narrative: Descriptive, contemplative, and a prod to get on with it ourselves. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Watkins is a reference librarian at Western Carolina University whose work has been published in several Seal Press anthologies, including A Woman Alone and Hot Flashes from Abroad. After the sudden death of her 23-year-old son, and her subsequent divorce, it seemed natural to Watkins to celebrate her 60th birthday by taking a trip around the world. Purchasing an airline ticket good for one year as long as she traveled in one direction, Watkins began traveling east, visiting friends and places she had seen before and places she had only dreamed of seeing. These included such diverse locations as Ireland, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Hawaii, to name a few. And since her family had hosted a series of international students in the past, Watkins visits many of them on their home turf, immersing herself in their way of life. Throughout this travelog, the author takes a look back at her past experiences in an attempt to understand how they have brought her to the present. It is a journey of self-awareness and of finding comfort, of experiencing foreign cultures and traditions while rediscovering the meaning of one's own history. Sometimes lyrical and sometimes alarming in tone, this tender and personal memoir is sure to find an audience in larger public libraries. Alison Hopkins, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
