Socioeconomically, this travelogue is about midway between Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun and Rita Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World. It's interesting enough as a travel narrative, though as when I read Mayes, I become more interested in how the authors financed their trips than in the trips themselves. The lack of discussion about money becomes an elephant in the room and intrudes on my engagement with the narrative. Forman foregrounds her marital tensions and interweaves them with her travelogues, but then drops the topic without a clear account of how those tensions were resolved. This is not only not well integrated but actively distracting. Did someone have an affair? A drinking problem? What is unsaid, and why was it included in the first place?

Forman does interesting things as a traveler. I admire her without wanting to spend time with her. ( )

Traveling around the world and seeking out the fringe societies within each society. Very entertaining. I enjoyed Bollywood and the fakaleiti of Tongo the most, but the entire book is great. ( )

Part travel writing and part memoir, "You Can’t Get There from Here" chronicles freelance writer Gayle Forman’s year-long travels with her husband Nick, and is as much about their relationship, and her attraction to the world’s outsiders, as it is about the places she visits along the way. Eschewing long descriptive passages concerning the geology and geography of the countries she passes through, Forman focuses mainly on one particular group of people in each chapter, attempting to see each place “through the eyes of those on the margins.” Thus, she hosts a party for fakaleiti (a third gender) in Tonga, struggles with how to help and relate to juvenile buskers in Cambodia, camps out with adolescent “Tolkienists” in Kazakhstan, and parties with members of a burgeoning hip-hop scene in Tanzania. What draws her to these groups is a need to explore the sense of belonging subcultures provide for their members, the same balm provided to her by the theater rats, punks, and art geeks she discovered in high school and still identifies herself with. Young adults will be especially drawn to this element of the book.

Forman’s exploration of fringe group identity also serves a very personal purpose, that of understanding her religious heritage and putting her rocky traveling relationship with her husband in perspective. In one of the more interesting chapters of the book, the author spends time with the Lemba of South Africa, a people of Christian-upbringing who only recently have discovered their Jewish roots as one of the “lost tribes of Israel.” Their struggle to deal with media harassment and to relate to more conservative Jewish groups forces Forman to ask some hard questions about her on-again off-again religious beliefs. The only area in which this book somewhat falters is the author’s repeated attempt to put the globalization that marginalizes many of the groups she meets into perspective and see the positive side of its effects, which too often suffers from hopeful generalization and unsubstantiated statements. But Forman’s sympathies are never in doubt when dealing with outsiders, and that’s not what the book is really about, anyhow. By remaining constantly open and honest about her feelings and foibles, she presents an engaging and intimate look at an imperfect but compassionate traveler doing her best to find her place in a physically and emotionally bewildering world, no matter where she happens to be along the journey. Moderate explicit language and sexual situations, drug use. Ages 14 and up.

Gayle and then boyfriend (now husband) decide to pack in their groovy life and travel around the world for a year. She and boyfriend seperate and come together, and this is her travelogue of meeting interesting and unusual people along the way. ( )

Another book I have been meaning to read, that I checked out from Russo's before I left so I could do so for free. Basic around the world story, getting to know the locals, having classic travel moments and of course, personal revelations. I found the relationship drama a little distracting, especially because the author seemed to me to be overreacting, but I guess that's always easy to see from another point of view, and maybe it made the story a little more human. Anyway, it was worth reading if you like that type of thing (I do); I'll let you know if Frances Mayes book is a better around the world account. I remember after mom read it (Mayes) she said she didn’t like reading travel writing because she's rather go there herself. Grandma was the opposite; she didn't want to go anywhere. Me, I think reading is a good fix for when you can't travel yourself—and a great way to get ideas for where to go next! But maybe mom didn't like reading about places when she knew she would never get to go there. I probably wouldn't—too depressing ( )