THEME: 4/5
CHARACTERS: 3/5
WRITING STYLE: 3.5/5
ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3.5/5
Ever since the travel bug bit me back in the early months of 2015, I have always found myself getting attracted to books revolving around travel, food, countries, people and their culture.
“Travel is so Broadening” is another of my Netgalley picks and just reading the title was sufficient for me to make a choice.
The book is a collection of ten different stories which are based in different parts of the world – Thailand, Canada, United States, Mexico, the Caribbean etc.
I mostly liked all the stories which the book had to offer. The best part – they all live up to the title of the book which reinstates that indeed – travel is broadening.
While a few stories relate to the difficult lives which people of other countries live, some talk about how a few people are made to feel like aliens in their own country and are forced to leave just because of their being “coloured”.
Yet others talk about the freedom and possibilities which they came to discover only when they travelled beyond the boundaries of their own country.
Another story talks about how a country which was once a home is no longer a home for one who has discovered the safety and comfort of a developed country.
All these stories invoke a myriad of emotions – shock, love, surprise but the most common emotion is that of joy.
I personally found the author’s writing style quite appealing. The way she can make the places (that her stories are based in) quite vivid and alive in the reader’s mind is nothing but a measure of her good writing skills.
I personally love the story titled “Travel is so Broadening” where a young man brings along her mother and fiancé to Trinidad and Tobago only to discover the joys of a simple life where finding happiness in doing something as basic as fishing makes him want to settle there forever. This was a very sweet story.
Another story which I liked was titled “Jamie and Alice”. In this story, a young Mexican Jamie is befriended by a visiting half-gringo (white-skinned or foreigner in Mexico) who has some concept of this country where her mother is from.
She likes the boy and the country. It is so different from her own United States and that too in a fun sort of way. She starts dating that boy. Her own dream is shattered and she is shell-shocked after a chance encounter brings her face to face with death. Unable to stay put, she soon leaves, leaving her love affair (both with the country and Jamie) incomplete.
There were a few other touching stories too – the one about the Pakistani boy in Canada, the other about the Asian girl in Thailand and so on. But like I have already stated, I loved them all.
“Travel is so Broadening” is an amazing read and I found it really “broadening”. I end this review by rating the book three and a half out of five stars and recommending it to all my readers especially those who love travelling.
Check out my YouTube Video Review below.
