An absorbing, evocative meditation on a road seldom traveled.
An American couple on a hike through the Himalayas endure more hardship and self-scrutiny than they bargained for in this travelogue.
Neuhaus, a successful psychotherapist, and his wife Olga decide to fulfill his boyhood dream of seeing Mount Everest not by climbing it but by joining a package tour to a nearby spot in the Nepalese foothills with a glorious view of the peak. The company assures them that they would follow well-worn trails with ten other tourists, two guides and plenty of Sherpas to assist them, but the 19-day trek to 18,000 feet and back is still no walk in the park for two people pushing 60. The culture shock alone almost kills them: the filth, eye-popping poverty and primitive sanitation of Nepal; the appalling cuisine in back-country Sherpa inns (“I couldn’t believe that food could be so bad,” Neuhaus marvels after a serving of pudding that seems made from wall paper paste); the baffling and “fairly depressing” rituals at a local Buddhist monastery. Then there are the physical perils of grueling marches, yaks that almost trample them on six-foot-wide mountain tracks and the debilitating effects of altitude sickness. “I cursed [the tour promoters] repeatedly for encouraging us to undertake this trek,” the author seethes as his exhaustion and shame at his flagging pace mount. Fortunately, his training as a psychologist enables Neuhaus to see past his frazzled emotions and glean more measured insights on the importance of accepting one’s limitations, adjusting to the inevitable, valuing the effort as well as the outcome and opening up to new things without prejudging them. Neuhaus’ plainspoken but vivid prose also conveys the compensating delights of the trip: the austere beauty of the landscape, the graciousness of the Nepalese and the blessings of a warm sleeping bag after a hard day’s walk.
An absorbing, evocative meditation on a road seldom traveled.Pub Date: July 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-0595617623
Page Count: 216
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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