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    Questions of Travel: Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award
    Unavailable
    Questions of Travel: Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award
    Unavailable
    Questions of Travel: Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award
    Ebook623 pages8 hours

    Questions of Travel: Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award

    By Michelle de Kretser

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award
    Winner of the 2013 ALS Gold Medal

    Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events.

    An enthralling array of people, places and stories surround these superbly drawn characters - from Theo, whose life plays out in the long shadow of the past, to Hana, an Ethiopian woman determined to reinvent herself.

    Michelle de Kretser illuminates travel, work and modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the way we live now. Questions of Travel is infused with wit, imagination, uncanny common sense and a deep understanding of what makes us tick.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAllen & Unwin
    Release dateJan 1, 2017
    ISBN9781743431979
    Unavailable
    Questions of Travel: Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award
    Author

    Michelle de Kretser

    Michelle De Kretser was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her family emigrated to Australia when she was a teenager, and she was educated in Melbourne and Paris. She is the author of five previous novels, including the Miles Franklin Award winners Questions of Travel and The Life to Come and the Man Booker Prize long-listed The Lost Dog. An honorary associate of the English department at the University of Sydney, she lives with her partner, the poet and translator Chris Andrews, in Sydney.

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    Reviews for Questions of Travel

    3.5/5

    74 ratings15 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I started this book quite some time ago, but I keep putting it aside. The characters just have not piqued my interest enough to want to continue. I have so many other books on my reading list.
    • 4/5
      A bold, clever and multi-faceted novel that is very difficult to summarise. It interleaves the stories of two main characters - Laura, an Australian who spends the first half of the book travelling and living in Europe and the second back in Sydney working for a company that makes travel guides, and Ravi, who leaves Sri Lanka and seeks asylum in Australia after his wife, a human rights campaigner and his son are murdered, ending up in Sydney working for the same company as Laura. These protagonists are largely passive ciphers, pegs to hang ideas and observations on. The ideas are about national identity, why people travel, how it changes them (or doesn't), how the travel industry works, how the internet changed perceptions and much much more. There are also richly observed details on many different places, and the writing flows easily and is never difficult to read. At just over 500 pages, it could possibly have been edited a little, but that is my only real criticism. For me de Kretser's best book yet.
    • 3/5
      This book was rather difficult to rate. The writer has a unique way of describing and showing the reader details; at times it was too much. I struggled at times not all the way through, but a lot of the time to continue. A story of two characters that I thought would suddenly meet and compare life or find meaning with each other and it did not happen, leaving me in wonder. Both characters were very well developed and I found myself liking them.
      I was given this book via goodreads and appreciate he chance to read it.
    • 4/5
      Amazing that a novel whose characters i never really cared about, managed to keep me engaged throughout. It IS beautifully written and includes some thoughtful observations on human nature.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful writing but too long
    • 4/5
      Not surprised that people have found this book tough. The language is fine but you may not get all the references and sometimes there are streams of consciousness that are beautifully poetic but perhaps not driving the story forward. Overall though a nourishing read
    • 3/5
      I found this book fascinating, thought-provoking, inciteful and very clever, but also quite epic, and hard going. Within the settings of well-known world events and places, this novel tracks the very different lives of two rather 'normal', unpretentious protagonists battling what life throws at them wherever they are on the globe and how their lives eventually become intertwined and fated.
    • 3/5
      I am thankful to have had the chance to read this book thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. I had read nothing by this author previously and was interested in her choice of subject. This was the story of two separate individuals who at one point eventually cross paths in a quite random way. Most of the book is random with the focus on the characters and their lives from childhood to mid-life. There is no specific plot or direction in the telling of this novel, but the writing was unique and beautiful. I resigned myself partway through to enjoying the book as it was without expecting or anticipating the direction or conclusion of the story, and I found that with that in mind I could appreciate it for what it was. Laura and Ravi, the two main characters, become very real as you read. They are incredibly different people from quite different backgrounds and yet they share some very specific traits. Both are looked down on by many of the people around them, but they manage to overlook it, seemingly without great concern. They both have a curiosity for the world around them and exploring, which is how they eventually meet, working for a travel guide publisher. Neither has much luck with love, and don't look for any romantic connection between them, or you will be disappointed. The characterizations are well done and realistic, but I think that appreciating the story will require the reader to have few expectations. If you do, you will undoubtedly find it boring or depressing. I thought the book was good, and I was glad to have the chance to read it. I was equally glad to finish it and probably won't find myself thinking of it much, if at all. I recommend this book for those who like to read for the joy of the words and don't have to identify with the characters. It is for laid back readers who go with the flow and don't expect a story to be earthmoving or happy along the way. I do not recommend it for romance or action lovers. This is literary fiction and will not resonate with them at all.
    • 3/5
      I would not rate this book as a" favourite read this year", the gimmick of writing alternating chapters in different time and place and about a different character annoyed a bit.. Ravi was an interesting person and I would have liked to know more about him and his family. The story about his wife's involvement as an activist in a resistance movement and why she and their child were murdered was not made clear to me. As for Laura, her story should have been titled "Around the World with Kinky Sex"; a lot of the description of these episodes was quite unnecessary and I think the author was trying to appeal to the readers who like erotic fiction such as "Fifty Shades of Grey ".That said, I quite liked her style of writing, there were lovely descriptive passages of the places that were visited, and some of her writing such as when she was describing the pretentious house of her step-mother were hilarious.
    • 4/5
      Laura Fraser is an Australian woman, Ravi Mendis lives in Sri Lanka. Both are travelers, in different ways and for very different reasons. Laura becomes disenchanted with her life in Sydney and sets out to see the world, eventually settling in London. Ravi loves his homeland, but flees in the aftermath of a horrific tragedy. This novel traces their respective journeys, exploring the importance of home, family, and relationships. It also examines the internet as a form of "travel," in its ability to overcome geographic borders and open up new worlds, especially for Ravi.This was an interesting read for me in that the most appealing aspect was the writing itself. I found the characters, especially Laura, a bit dry. The plot wasn't very complex, and some elements were predictable. The march of technology from the 1980s into the new millennium struck me as a bit hackneyed. But oh, Michele de Kretser can write! I was swept up in her prose:Fear was rising like water in Martine Hinkel as she tilted the jug over the pot. Teaspoons had provoked it. Long ago, people she loved had taught her that black skin harbors germs. No one, learning what Martine's life had been like, would have held her responsible for it. But the past was a trinket she kept locked, lied about, wore always around her neck. One of the things that lay twisted inside was love; she would never betray it to the light. And as beautiful as that passage is, two paragraphs later Martine commits a staggering act of racism, rendered so subtly by de Kretser that I had to read it twice.Questions of Travel is filled with moments to be enjoyed by the slow, careful reader.
    • 3/5
      Interesting characters. Pace was a bit slow. Ending was a bit of a cop out.
    • 2/5
      Beautifully written tedium. I abandoned it.
    • 2/5
      Gave it a good go but could not find the books rhythm. Did not finish
    • 4/5
      At first, Questions of Travel seems more like a series of vignettes, each set in a different country. There are many characters, many settings, many years covered, but few sustained scenes. Those who prefer well-plotted books with plenty of action will probably not enjoy this novel, but for those who love beautiful writing, vivid details, and arresting turns of phrase, this may well be the perfect selection. In the words of A.S. Byatt, “[de Kretser] writes quickly and lightly of wonderful and terrible things.”The novel opens in the 1960s, when Laura is two, and her twin brothers try to kill her in the swimming pool, which results in recurring dreams of water. Her mother dies of breast cancer, and she is raised mostly by her father’s aunt Hester, who fills her head with stories of travel in imaginary lands such as Narnia, as well as real destinations such as Spain, France, and Greece. So begins a life of wanderlust. Laura fulfills her need to travel via house-sitting, through spending an inheritance, and later, through travel-writing. Ultimately, she winds up working for a company that publishes travel guides. Meanwhile, she has affairs with various men.Ravi’s parallel story begins in “a pretty backwater…on the west coast of Sri Lanka, twenty-three miles from Colombo.” He and his friend start an Internet business. He falls in love, marries an outspoken Sinhalese activist, and becomes a father. After tragedy strikes, he flees to Australia and seeks asylum. Eventually, he winds up working at the same publishing company as Laura.As the title implies, de Kretser raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of travel, and how seemingly random events can alter the trajectory of a life. The short chapters ultimately accumulate into a satisfying, and deeply moving whole.
    • 2/5
      This highly acclaimed and awarded novel did little to inspire our group. The mingling of Laura and Ravi’s stories tended to confuse rather than bind, and most of us found ourselves lost in the language rather than thriving in it. Not the reaction we generally look for in a novel. Therefore, our discussion centred mostly around travel verses tourism, as this was the only real theme we could identify with. In doing so, we shared some wonderful travel stories and chatted about the pros and cons of travelling, where it took us and what we gained from it. Most of us have travelled moderate to extensively, so it was a lively discussion.This was all very interesting, but what were de Kretser’s questions of travel … in other words, what was she trying to say to us in this novel? Cheryle struggled big time with this book and even tackled it by reading all of Ravi’s story first, then going back and reading Laura’s. Not with any great success, but at least she gave it an honest shot!In the end we came to the conclusion that literary fiction may not be our ideal read … but as a book club we are always up to the challenge.