Contents May Have Shifted

November 21, 2011
Writing teacher Pam has a comfortable life that allows her the flexibility and freedom to travel the world, usually with her boyfriend, Ethan. However, she realizes that Ethan can’t commit and discovers that he’s still involved with former girlfriends. Once she learns this, Pam turns to her friends to evaluate her needs, desires, and priorities. She finds a new partner, Rick, who has an adorable seven-year-old daughter, Madison. Pam inexplicably bonds with Madison, but this new relationship also means struggling with Rick’s ex-wife and her continuing influence over Rick’s life. Pam starts to feel like she has to choose between her nomadic lifestyle and the life she’s building with Rick and Madison. Instead of a proper novel, Houston’s (Cowboys Are My Weakness) latest reads more like a collection of delicately framed and delightful vignettes. With the narrative jumping from place to place, readers will feel like they too are touring the world. However, despite well-crafted prose, Pam feels curiously absent from the emotion of the story, which prevents readers from investing in her relationships or life choices. Agent: The Sayle Literary Agency.

January 1, 2012
Houston's second novel (Sight Hound, 2005, etc.) combines thinly disguised travel essays with a new age romance as her heroine travels the world with one lover, then more or less settles down for another. Narrator Pam is a California professor with a very flexible schedule, seemingly unlimited financial resources and an itch for roaming. Over 100 brief chapters follow her to various exotic locations, from Alaska to Bhutan to Patagonia to Tunisia, to name just a few--after a while the places begin to run together--where she gets to know the locals, enjoys the local food and usually has a lively adventure or inner awakening. Sometimes fearless, sometimes scared to death, the narrator (whose identity reads close to the author's) doesn't take herself too seriously during these quests, which often include near-death experiences, and she skillfully captures the essence of each place she visits. The descriptions of her plane rides, and aviation near-disasters, are often hilarious. But less humorous are the relationship issues Pam is working out as she approaches 50. She brags annoyingly about her many, many friends, including semi-famous literary ones, although none develop into actual characters--another case of names running together. But Pam's romantic history is problematic. Her past includes a dead lover she idealizes. Her present, as the book opens, includes Ethan, a womanizing jerk whom women find incredibly desirable despite his lack of a discernable personality. After their drawn out breakup, she goes on a series of snidely described bad dates before she meets Rick, a "highbrow hick" with a Masters in philosophy and religion who makes custom wood flooring for a living. To Pam, he is the perfect mix of redneck and new age cowboy. The hitch is his 8-year-old daughter and his complicated connection to his ex-wife. Can Pam balance her need to explore the world with her desire for intimacy with homebound Rick? Houston is a fine travel writer, but her characters are cardboard cutouts for every cliché of contemporary uplifting women's fiction.

(COPYRIGHT (2012) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2012

From 747s overloaded with fuel to small cargo planes on which she has to blend in with the duffel bags to avoid detection, frequent flier-narrator Pam crisscrosses the globe, sharing her experiences and impressions. Sometimes she travels with a man, at others with a woman friend or a gaggle of female companions. Eventually, she tries for a more settled life with a man and his daughter. She has experiences big and small: helping young ducks cross a road, being shouted at in a language she doesn't understand while plane after plane departs the airport, comforting her wolfhound, who's suffering from cancer. She gets a variety of New Age and foreign massages. It's a simple story, really, of a woman trying to find happiness. It's told through a series of short chapters (sometimes just a few sentences) as the account floats back and forth in time and space. But there is a compelling narrative here for readers willing to find it, and they will learn a lot about a modern woman and her hopes and fears. VERDICT From the author of the critically acclaimed Cowboys Are My Weakness, this book is not for everyone but is highly recommended for adventurous readers.--Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2011
Houston's latest novel finds Pam, the intrepid narrator, shuttling the world over, from Alaska to Tunisia, from Bhutan to Newfoundland, searching for authenticity, drinking up life, and maybe, just maybe, fleeing from a little conflict. As Pam first wrestles with a stagnant relationship, then enters a more promising (but arguably not easier) one, she philosophizes with girlfriends, mystics, and old lovers on all of life's usual questions in a refreshingly witty and bold manner. The novel's nonlinear plot builds meaning associatively through 144 minisections, each set in a new global location, enchanting the reader with unexplained characters and backstory. While a less-skilled writer would falter with this disjointed technique, Houston, in controlled, elegant prose, imbues each pithy chapter with unifying lyricism. As the flight attendant says after a plane experiencing fuel-system failure successfully lands, If your contents haven't shifted, you must be carrying lead weights. Unapologetic and empowering, Houston's book hammers home the idea that if you don't have problems, you probably aren't living. Or, to use her metaphor, we all have baggage, so we might as well get used to traveling with it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)