by Susan Jane Gilman
It's like reading a train wreck. You don't want to hear any more, and yet you can't turn away...
I expected this to be a somewhat amusing adventures of ditzy girls traveling, but my daughter highly recommended it to me, so I read it.This book had a lot more substance than that - perhaps because the author was writing it years after the trip to China, so had some perspective on her 21/22 year ol...
Susan and her friend, Claire, set off for a round-the-world trip, but everything came to a screaming halt when Claire was beset with mental illness. This is the story of Susan’s trip, taken over thirty years ago. I love travel memoirs, but I really liked this one more than most of my recent reads. I...
As Keath Fraser's anthology Bad Trips amply illustrates, travel is fraught with difficulties and unexpected events, of which only some are humorous. Gilman tells the story of her out-of-college, around-the-world trip with Brown University acquaintance "Claire." It starts like any travelogue that rec...
I am such a huge fan of memoirs and this one was a little different as it really became a story with a how it unfolded. You really can't put it down until you know how it ends. I just couldn't imagine going to a foreign country like China without the support of at least a translator, but that is you...
This is a memoir from Susan Jane Gilman, a best selling author who decided to take an adventure and backpack around the world. In 1986, Susan and her friend Claire had just finished college and wanted a daring and original experience. They decided to travel for a year and they would start their trip...
This is by far the most bizarre travel story I've read. In 1986, two twentysomething Ivy-League graduatewomen bit off more than they could chew, ran off to a China newly open to the West, and lived to tell the tale. The descriptions of culture shock are heartfelt, and the moments of sheer panic ma...
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