An Innocent Abroad

October 6, 2014
From Cold War Yugoslavia to modern-day Yemen, Lonely Planet’s latest collection of nonfiction travel stories doesn’t leave a stone or continent unturned. Readers will relish Simon Winchester’s boyhood tale of a near-death experience in the Arctic Circle and Marina Lewycka’s vodka-soaked narrative of being stranded at a Russian summer camp. Other stories, such as Alexander McCall Smith’s brush with murder in Swaziland and Ann Patchett’s tale of friendship formed while backpacking around Europe, focus on the loss of innocence. A few of the selections are plagued by clichés of the travel genre: overly sentimental, boastful, or boring. Personal narratives of David Baldacci discovering his familial ancestry in Italy and Mary Karr’s trek through the Guatemalan jungle are among those that fail to hit the mark. But high-quality tales from John Berendt, Cheryl Strayed, Tim Cahill, and Anna Vodicka are enough to keep readers paging through this enjoyable collection.

September 15, 2014
The title is, of course, a play upon the Mark Twain classic, recounting his travels in Europe and the Near East. Twain, who was no innocent, used his title for tongue-in-cheek irony. But most of the 35 writers in this collection really do define themselves as relatively inexperienced, if not innocents, in the art of travel. Sloane Crosley, a first-time visitor to Australia, learns that discretion outranks valor when she decides not to jump off a cliff into the ocean in winter. Tim Cahill describes his sense of awe and wonder when, as a young college student on spring break, he witnessed a sunrise over a high-desert mountain range in Utah. It probably wasn't life changing, but it was certainly memorable. The great Jan Morris was a 20-year-old lieutenant when enchanted with the celestial beauty of Venice. Lloyd Jones learned a life lesson when he tried, unsuccessfully, to con a stranger by creating a false identity while in a Zurich bar. Most but not all of these vignettes effectively convey the sense of novelty, and sometimes wide-eyed wonder, that youthful travelers are often fortunate to experience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)