NICE PLACES

A diffident man has to get lost in order to find himself in Chu’s whimsical novel.

Unremarkable Georgie quits his job as an account manager at Oats Technologies seconds after he gets fired. He plans to use his meager savings to travel the world for a year. But Georgie’s trip gets derailed before it even starts when he meets Mindy, a female monk, who robs him after lulling him into a meditative state (“Mindy was not there and neither were his bags”). He gives chase but eventually passes out, waking up at a guesthouse run by a man named Filip in the run-down Panhandle section of town. Early during his stay, Georgie posts a photo of his meal of boat noodles on his Instagram. He discovers from comments on the post that people think he’s in Thailand, so Georgie decides to continue making such deceptive posts until his replacement passport arrives and he can begin his journey for real. He soon takes on a partner in his virtual travelogue: Ant, a multimedia artist from Berlin. They develop more elaborate postings as Georgie pretends to travel through Asia, then Europe—things start to fall apart when Sad Vagabond magazine requests an interview. In Georgie, Chu has created a pitiable Everyman who is woefully unprepared for his voyage, actual or virtual, making him difficult to root for. Still, he does accidentally manage to invent an ingenious alternative form of travel, and he displays real ingenuity in keeping up the hoax for as long as he does. Travel is partly about building communities, and Georgie certainly does that with Ant, Filip, and the other temporary denizens of the guesthouse. Georgie deserves the comeuppance he receives after feeling superior for fooling so many followers, and at the satisfying conclusion, a more mature Georgie stands ready to face his future. His pilgrimage of self-discovery pays off handsomely—for himself and the reader.

A would-be traveler entertainingly fools others—and himself most of all—in this thoughtful novel.