ALL OVER THE MAP

A follow-up to An Italian Affair (2001), combining jaunts around the globe with a journey into the author’s psyche.

More magazine contributing editor Fraser has a problem: how to fit her independent, travel-loving self into a settled, loving relationship—i.e., how to find a husband. The author opens with her vacation in Oaxaca with the married professor who figured prominently in her earlier memoir. Then the 40-year-old Fraser set off for Naples, Samoa, Provence, Peru, Rwanda and Mexico. In between she participated in an Outward Bound venture in Canyonlands National Park, a college reunion in Connecticut, a meditation retreat in Marin County and tango lessons in Buenos Aires. Assignments writing about food enabled her to wine and dine in style, and her descriptions of meals are mouthwatering. Fraser is also perceptive about her surroundings and frank about her desires; her trials and tribulations with men are alternately funny and sad, and seemingly never-ending. The trip to Samoa provided a kind of turning point, when a sexual assault on the beach exposed her to her own vulnerability, shook her self-confidence and dampened her eagerness to travel. In the final chapters the author is 47 and still single, and she has built a home in the town in Mexico where she vacationed as a child. Even though she hasn’t found a husband, Fraser seems to have achieved a kind of balance that gives her story a calm and upbeat ending.

Entertaining chick lit that should resonate with women striving to have it all.