Better Than Fiction

August 27, 2012
This refreshing compilation of 32 travel essays by some of the world's best-known fiction writers offers intimate and offbeat impressions of places near and far. Included in this gem of a book are works by many familiar stylists, including Peter Matthiessen, Joyce Carol Oates, Frances Mayes, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, and Kurt Anderson; others such as Saudi-born Keija Parssinen, 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction winner Marina Lewycka, and Booker- and Whitbread-prize winner DBC Pierre are less well-known but hardly less accomplished. Snaking around the globe via multiple modes of transport, the storytellers explore the Solomon Islands, the American highway, central Mexico, San Quentin prison, Antarctica, the Watts Towers, Malawi, the Sudan, and Bear Trap Canyon near Bozeman, Mont.

September 15, 2012
An uneven collection of pieces that extend and expand the typical notion of travel writing. The subtitle proclaims these "True Travel Tales from Great Fiction Writers," though the contents raise some issues. All of the included writers have written some fiction, but many are known as well (or even more) for their journalism, including Jan Morris, who has earned her reputation primarily as a travel writer (yet here writes of an imaginary destination). Some of the authors write not as travelers, but as immigrants who have made adjustments to a different home or adults who have made a homecoming. Others write of places where no traveler would likely visit--e.g., the cellblock of San Quentin, explored by Joyce Carol Oates in the longest and most emotionally powerful piece. Yet, cumulatively, they reinforce the assertion of Bryce Courtenay ("Australia's top-selling novelist") that "[g]ood travel is returning home a slightly bigger part of everyone and not quite the same person as when you set out." His essay, more of a trend piece than an illumination of a destination, is about how "personal adventure travel has come of age. For a great many of us, our travel mindset has largely changed from seeing to doing and from observing to participating." The most affectingly literary of the inclusions is by Britain's Stephen Kelman, on a reporting trip to India, where he realized that "the world is as weird and sad and beautiful as I would have it be, and that my place in it is as inevitable as the wind in the trees." Other notable contributors include Isabel Allende, Kurt Andersen, Pico Iyer, Alexander McCall Smith and Frances Mayes. Some interesting reading for armchair travelers.

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Starred review from October 1, 2012

While the adage is that truth is stranger than fiction, readers may find this collection of true stories--as its title promises--not only stranger, but better than fiction. This fantastic collection of 32 travel stories, edited by George (global travel editor, Lonely Planet; Lonely Planet Travel Writing), comes from some of the best fiction writers publishing today. These true travel tales range from events in the writer's distant past to recent adventures. They cover the globe from India to Alaska to San Quentin to Ireland and include entries from an eclectic mix of international writers, including Isabel Allende, Pico Iyer, Alexander McCall Smith, Jan Morris, and Tea Obreht. VERDICT A festive collection of travel stories from some amazing writers. The only thing lacking in this collection is more entries! Lovers of travel writing, as well as fans of fiction, will thoroughly enjoy this collection.--Melissa Aho, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
The intrepid adventurers at Lonely Planet continue to churn out imaginatively clever travel literature. This one combines travel with literary memoir as 32 reasonably well-known fiction writers recall some of their most remarkable experiences on the open road. While Frances Mayes, Joyce Carol Oates, Alexander McCall Smith, and Isabel Allende will be familiar to most, the travels of the lesser-known scribes are just as fascinating and fun. Seasoned editor George has also included a brief introduction to each piece, listing the books and outlining the literary credentials of its author. Armchair travelers will relish taking gorgeous, descriptive trips to Mexico, the Solomon Islands, Rome, Luxembourg, Java, and a host of other exotic and not-so exotic destinations.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

August 18, 2012
Better than Fiction is a brilliant collection of travel stories, written especially for Lonely Planet, which spans the globe in the tradition of the publisher’s previous anthologies such as Unpacked: Travel Disaster Stories. The list of Australian and international contributing authors is impressive. Among the highlights, Arnold Zable offers a glimpse of China emerging from the Cultural Revolution; M J Hyland writes about her encounters with thieves in Rome; Nikki Gemmell is changed by love and loss in Antarctica; and Marina Lewycka finds a travellers’ oasis in Malawi. In other wonderful stories, Alexander McCall Smith meets Freudian psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires; Joyce Carol Oates writes of an unnerving visit to San Quentin prison in California; Steven Hall tells an odd but beautiful tale of a shark; and Bryce Courtenay bemoans government restrictions on travellers at airports. Also in separate stories, Steven Amsterdam and Sophie Cunningham refer to the psychoactive side-effects of the same anti-malarial drug. The collection is threaded with great warmth, as readers are invited to travel in the company of these famous authors and experience their passions and revelations; it also shows that nonfiction can indeed be as good as, if not better than, fiction.

Andrew Wrathall is the publishing assistant for Bookseller+Publisher