Friday, March 9, 2012

i love to travel, but i prefer to keep my romance american.

In Pam Houston's fictional travelogue, Contents May Have Shifted, she names her main character Pam, which makes me think that this novel is actually light on the fiction and heavy on exerts from Houston's travel diary. I don't blame her for leaving readers to wonder what is fact and what is fiction, I would do the same. I actually plan on doing the same...someday. Speaking of travel, Monday I leave for my trip to Ireland for St. Patrick's Day and then to London for a few days after. It's okay to be jelly.


Pam travels from Davis, California, where she is a professor with a flexible schedule, to Creed, Colorado, where she owns a small piece of property, and then sets out to various locations around the world: Alaska, South Asia, North Africa, and then back to the States to New Mexico,Wisconsin and Texas. It is rather Eat, Pray Love-ish, beginning with Pam running away from her disastrous ex, Ethan. During her travels she gets to know the locals, enjoys the local food and usually has a lively adventure or inner awakening, the difference is this character never really settles down and Houston's writing focuses more on the nature of these locales, which I love.

I have never been to any of the places Houston writes about, which honestly made me like this novel more.

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