Genre: Contemporary
Fiction
Description:
“Thomas Gephardt is a world traveler. Or at least he would like to be
one. Determined to leave the confines of his sheltered upbringing in the United
States, he voyages to France to expand his horizons. He spends three months
with a French family in Bordeaux, working in a local hotel. Inspired by these
experiences, Thomas has plans to continue traveling. However, a romantic
interest in Paris—an Israeli woman named Sendi—complicates matters. He leaves,
but remains in contact with Sendi while he lives abroad in Japan as an English
teacher and then in Israel as a volunteer on a kibbutz.
Throughout his explorations, Thomas attempts to probe deeply into his
experiences and to ponder big questions: What is the value of foreign travel?
What is unique about each of these three cultures? How is each country shaped
by its history? On the lighter side, Thomas has a variety of experiences—he is
seen as a "quasi-alien" in a French restaurant, he wonders if he can
meet expectations as a "talking monkey" in Japan, and he is informed
that, unlike in The Big Lebowski, he definitely cannot roll on Shabbos in
Israel.
Bill Bryson meets J.D. Salinger, The Perfect Culture is full of
satirical observations and thoughtful analysis of travel, people, and customs.”
Author:
Brent Robins lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he participates in many
interests including singing, exercise, reading, and watching movies. He’s also
an avid traveler, having visited over forty countries.
For more, visit Mr. Robin’s website.
Appraisal:
The problem with this book isn’t with the message it is attempting to
impart on the reader. That message, which I’ll discuss shortly, is not only
valid, but also something that could and should be of value to many potential
readers. The problem is that the book tries to be something that it’s not (at
least not in the form it’s taken) rather than what it wants and needs to be.
Anyone who has studied fiction writing has been exposed to the maxim that teaches a budding novelist to “show, don’t tell.” The idea behind
this is that a character doesn’t tell the reader directly how they feel or what
they’re thinking. Instead the character’s actions and his dialog (the words he
speaks to other characters in the scene) communicate this to the reader in a
more indirect, but also more entertaining way. An extremely large portion of The
Perfect Culture is the protagonist, Thomas, outlining for the reader his
reactions, his thoughts, often his entire thinking process to come to a conclusion
about how he feels about something that just happened to him. By the end of the
book I felt the same way about Thomas as his high school classmates, that he
was very strange guy. But I wasn’t entertained in the same way I’d like a novel
to do.
I started the book in agreement with the premise it is trying to
illustrate, that travel is a positive for the traveler in exposing them to
people, places, and cultures that are different from their home. However, the
story did get me to recognize additional ways and reasons why this is true. But
that was in spite of rather than because of the way the information was
presented.
Possibly this same story, done much differently, could have worked as
a novel. But I can also see the point being made better if it was done as a
non-fiction book. That might be done by presenting vignettes of experiences different
people had while traveling with the traveler’s explanation of what they’d
learned from the experience. Or possibly, given the author’s extensive travel,
this is a memoir in disguise. If so, maybe it should have been written as such.
The one thing I’m sure of is, as a novel, this didn’t work for me.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: ***
Three Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 85-90,000 words
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