Genre:
Travel Memoir
Description:
“What
kind of student would go halfway around the world to stir up an
independence movement on his summer break?
At
nineteen, Jamie was nicely on track to becoming one of the most
boring people in England, but an impulse trip to the jungles of
Kalimantan changed all that. Spurred on by what he encountered among
the tribespeople of the Krayan, he made a decision to discover the
truth of the world around him, however uncomfortable that truth would
turn out to be.”
Author:
“Jamie
Alexander is a writer and photographer based in Oxfordshire, England,
with a keen interest in current affairs and travel. He's seen his
fair share of adventures, from being mobbed by villagers in the high
Himalaya and hunting wild boar in the world's most remote rain
forests, to meeting Papuan rebels in the highlands of New Guinea.
When he isn't off doing ridiculous things in faraway places, he likes
bouldering, eating cheese, and reading about people doing ridiculous
things in faraway places.”
Learn more at Jamie's author page on Goodreads.
Appraisal:
Travel
narratives or travel memoirs are an interesting breed. Done well, the
“where” isn’t all that important. Sure, you’ll get unique
insights into the destination or destinations covered, but for
details on that there are better sources. Instead, the genre
unfailingly has a (hopefully) unique twist on one or both of two
standard lessons. Either the author through their experience learns
to understand himself or herself better in some way or they’re
shown the truth of the cliché “people everywhere are the same.”
Nowhere
Like Home has the normal
lessons. However, it has another that is clearly the biggest lesson.
While “people everywhere are the same” is a lesson that no matter
how different we may be, people everywhere have the same basic hopes
and dreams, the other lesson here is about the differences. How
people in dissimilar areas and other cultures can have values and
outlooks on the world and life that are also valid. That by
understanding them better we can break down our own prejudices and
often incorrect preconceptions, leading to a better understanding of
the world and our place in it which, when I stop to think about it,
takes us back to standard lesson #1.
FYI:
Added for Reprise Review:
Nowhere Like Home
was a nominee in the Non-Fiction category for B&P 2014 Readers'
Choice Awards. Original review ran June 3, 2013
Format/Typo
Issues:
A small
number of typos and other proofing and copy editing misses.
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 105-110,000 words
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