Give Me the World [Paperback]

My views on this changed when my sister gave me a copy of Leila Hadley's extraordinary "Give Me the World." A travel book in name only, this work by a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of author James Boswell is more a journey of self-discovery than it is about the places she visits--but the writing is so fierce, so fine, so rich and complex, that as a travelogue it is still head and shoulders above 90% of what else is out there cluttering the travel book bookshelves. Case in point:

Of trying to learn Siamese: "Learning to recognize such simple signs as DANGER, WOMEN and EXIT was as difficult as memorizing the patterns in filigreed silver."

Of the Siamese attitude towards life: "Although Siamese, as good Buddhists, do not believe in taking life, they see nothing wrong in rescuing a fish from drowning. If the creatures die on the bank or in a net, it is probably from exhaustion due to their long immersion, they say, and surely there can be no harm in eating them."

Of Bangkok's reputation as a den of iniquity: "To make sure that one missed nothing of Bangkok's [physical] wonderland, the Siamese had thoughtfully provided a 'Baedeker' . . . in the preface [it noted], 'This pocket book is somewhat inevitable to be kept ready at the hands.' "

Of her opium den experience: "I thought ahead to the times when, back in New York, I would say, 'By the way, I once had an interesting experience in an opium den' or even, 'Opium? Why, of course, I smoked it in Bangkok.' "

Of the difference between western and Malayan clothing: " . . . the people not in western costume looked out of place and a little garish, like partygoers in evening clothes coming home at breakfast time."

Of cooking on board a small boat: " . . . breakfast was a tempestuous affair. Vic darted about the lounge scaling coffee mugs at us, swearing at the stove, in a pother that the biscuits were burned on the bottom and raw on top, rattling and banging pans, and all the while keeping up a running flow of conversation about an article one of the men's adventure pulps had ordered him to rewrite, about the things he wanted to do--all the wildly impractical things like walking from Cairo to Morocco, chartering a dhow to explore the Baluchistan coast, leading an archaeological expedition to Alaska, and then his talk coursed off onto the subject of women and their extraordinary behavior."

On jellyfish: "We were almost abreast of the muddy current when a myriad of filmy jellyfish streamed past the hull. They were beautiful things, delicately colored--some like fragile bladders of Venetian blown glass, some like the pinky-fawn undersides of toadstools with pearly streamers."

On steering the boat at dawn: "The dawn watch. It was one of those chance rewards of travel, a magic moment, untranslatable from its time and place, a moment which lives on perpetually, with all its colors made fast. Just then there was no sign of dawn. The masts were still black against the luminous darkness of the sky, the sails grey in the starlight. There was a thrilling flush of wind against my skin."

On the Taj Mahal: "It shimmered. It glowed. It had the magical property of not looking man-made. Its marble walls had the tender radiance of seashells, petals and moonlit snow."

I could go on and on (and already have!), but really, you have to read the book to get more of this gorgeous prose and see a sheltered girl--yes, a girl, despite her twenty-five years and her six-year old son--blossom into a woman of the world as she makes her way around it. Highly recommended!