Rediscovered Reviews: 6 Intrepid Reads for Armchair Travelers

When I was younger, I used to always think armchair travelling was limited to only reading travel memoirs or nonfiction about international cities and exotic locales. Luckily I figured out that a vast array of fiction can be your ticket to adventure beyond your walls.

In THE DESERTER, written by master suspense writer Nelson DeMille (author of more than twenty five novels alone) and co-authored with his Nelson’s screen-writer son Alex DeMille, introduces readers to Army investigator Scott Brodie. Brodie has roguish qualities, and a knack for getting the job done by any means necessary–usually not by the book. His superiors despair, but Brodie’s brilliant (if unorthodox) work is unparalleled in the Criminal Investigation Division. Add into the mix Brodie’s young new partner, the beautiful and talented Maggie Taylor, who military brass hope will inspire Brodie to follow the rules. 

With plenty of action–from shoot-outs with Venezuelan gangsters to daring flights in a jungle plane–this high-octane thriller will keep you breathless and possibly, a little relieved to be journeying through its pages and not on this hazardous search for the truth yourself.  After all, it’s more comfortable to escape into the world of international intrigue and jeopardy, than need to escape from it! 

Read more of Elizabeth’s review!

This story is about a young man named Christian who is contacted by a London-based legal firm and informed that he may be the rightful heir to a century-old fortune. All he has to do is prove it. There’s a catch, of course—time is of the essence. The time frame in which the untold fortune can be kept within the family is limited to eighty years, and those eighty years are nearly up.

Christian, with little more to go on than a curious letter in a museum archive, embarks on a journey across Europe, guided only by his amateur research and luck. His search eventually resurrects a collection of letters that plunge him into what might be his family history, their story running parallel with his own across time as he chases their specters and secrets through the French countryside, the frozen Swedish lake country, and the fjords of Iceland. The letters reveal a passionate, doomed love affair of a rebellious aristocratic woman and a young mountaineer scheduled to leave for the trenches of the First World War. The couple’s single week together before the Great War pulls them—and the fabric of Europe—apart sparks a series of events that impact the rest of their lives. This is a page-turning adventure story that is delightfully literary, a romance that is not damagingly sentimental. Justin Go’s debut is a wonderful novel and hopefully only the beginning of what this young writer has to offer.

Read more of Elaine’s review!

Early on, Harriet discovers that her late husband, Bernard, entered and won an Alaskan cruise for two before his passing. When Harriet’s friend, Mildred, bows out of the trip, Harriet embarks solo on the cruise. That is, if you don’t count Bernard, who keeps popping up in her peripheral vision, insisting he has something important to tell her from “the other side.” As Harriet navigates the buffet line and the nightclubs on board, she simultaneously charms and alienates everyone she meets. So what if she sometimes slips into conversation with her dead husband? She couldn’t be friendlier to the passengers. And when her daughter surprises Harriet by showing up at port in Juneau, you’ve got to hand it to Harriet for trying to right old wrongs—she spews advice like a slot machine spitting out coins.

Harriet’s travels take her from Washington State to Juneau to Ketchikan, but like all good bildungsromans, the journey suggests so much more than sight-seeing opportunities for our feisty heroine. Harriet has viewed not only the Alaskan shoreline but also the crags and valleys of her own messy life, which, in retrospect, seem perhaps not so terrible. As her chronicler advises her, “It’s not every day that there’s order in the universe, Harriet Chance, so enjoy this: Breathe deeply of that salty air, really let it fill your lungs. . . . Live, Harriet, live!” It would seem sound advice for us all, words that even Harriet could agree with.

Read more of Wendy’s review!

Born and raised in San Benedetto, an Italian village obsessed with football (“soccer,” to Americans), Etto is an emotionally frayed young man slowly disengaging himself from the village after the deaths of his mother and twin brother. He sees life in San Benedetto as pointless, repetitive, and constrictive, and refuses to join in the village’s preoccupation with football. But all this changes when an Italian football star called Yuri Fil visits the village with his sister Zhuki. Etto promptly falls in love with her and he soon finds himself playing football with Yuri and his bodyguard every night, plotting ways to spend time with Zhuki. Etto slowly lets go of his cynicism, and allows himself to feel with his heart again.

Beautifully written, THE SUN AND OTHER STARS transports the reader to a wonderful place that is no less real or complicated than everyday life. It is the flawed grace and hope with which these people handle their problems that makes this novel worth reading. I found myself in the middle of a snowy winter night, rooting through the fridge for some gelato, eager to fall into the warmth of San Benedetto again.

Read more of Etinosa’s review!

My favorite Anne Tyler novel is THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST—the story of Macon Leary, a travel writer who hates to travel. After Macon’s son dies in a violent tragedy, he and his wife are consumed with grief and end up separating. Forced to start anew in midlife, Macon becomes depressed, ends up breaking his leg, and falls into a new relationship with a kooky dog trainer.

If the novel I’ve just described sounds rather bleak, let me assure you that it’s just the opposite—joyful, exhilarating, and brimming with comic invention. In fact, what I love most about THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (and a lot of other Anne Tyler novels) is the way its characters are always thinking creatively, always designing new ways to save time, save money, and amuse themselves. Macon writes a series of travel guides for businessmen who don’t like to travel. His siblings play a card game called Vaccination, which “they’d invented as children…[and it] had grown so convoluted over the years that no one else had the patience to learn it.” The kooky dog trainer, Muriel, runs a concierge service called “George” that also offers chauffeuring, poison-proofing, and bomb detection.

There’s so much joyful invention and imagination in THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, I never get tired of (re)reading it. It’s also one of the most hopeful novels I’ve ever read. Some people are lucky enough to rediscover happiness after a terrible tragedy, and THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST shows how one reluctant traveler does just that.

Read more of Jason’s review!

THE EXPATRIATES details the lives of three American women—Margaret, Mercy, and Hilary—whose lives converge and are ultimately changed forever in the cosmopolitan expat haven of Hong Kong. But it is clear that life abroad is far from the romanticized vision that many Americans believe it to be, as each woman grapples with the ghosts of her past and the promises of what might have been. Hong Kong brings these women together, for better or worse—and as their stories of heartbreak, friendship, and motherhood unfold, they soundly reminded me that we are never quite as alone as we think.

Lee’s prose captures the overwhelming but strangely calming experience of displacement, portraying how it feels to live in a large, foreign city where you are constantly reminded of just how small a role you play. Each chapter switches focus between the three women, richly describing different facets of their personal grief and how they come to terms with what they cannot change.

Read more of Ruby’s review!