Thursday, October 6, 2011

SWEPT: LOVE WITH A CHANCE OF DROWNING by Torre DeRoche


THE GIST:

A girl who's afraid of the ocean decides to sail around the world with the man she loves.

THE VERDICT:

This is the best travel memoir I have read in a while, and I read a lot of travel memoirs. Torre DeRoche meets a man in a bar in San Francisco, and before she knows it she is agreeing to sail around the world with him in an old boat named Amazing Grace. She has no sailing experience and no interest in the ocean, but she decides to face everything she is afraid of and leave behind the city life she loves for this man.
This is a great love story with genuine stakes, genuine emotion and some serious adventures. Torre and Ivan face many difficulties on their voyage, from mechanical trouble to unfriendly weather to figuring out how to get along when they haven't known each other for that long. I could not put the book down. It made me laugh and cry, sometimes in the same chapter, and it had me wondering if I could set off on a round-the-world voyage of my own.

I think one of the keys to a great travel memoir is to set a gripping narrative pace, even if there are plenty of dull moments along the road. Torre does this. A travel memoir also needs to create a sense of wonder that makes you wish you were traveling and feel as if you were there at the same time. Torre does this too, conjuring up the beauty of isolated islands in the South Pacific and intimate moments aboard the sailboat. Finally, as with any other memoir, the narrator must be an engaging, inspiring and relatable person, someone that you would want for a real life travel buddy. Torre is that narrator, and I hope you'll think about reading her story too.

THE LINK:

Torre DeRoche's blog: The Fearful Adventurer

THE COST:

$11.99 for the Kindle Edition

THE QUESTION:

Is there a limit to what you would do for someone you love? Is there a fear you couldn't overcome or a change you couldn't make?

3 comments:

  1. Upon your recommendation, I just ordered this for my Kindle, and was pleasantly suprised to find it was only $9.99.

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  2. That's good to know. I thought I remembered paying $9.99 for it, but when I checked Amazon it was listed for $11.99. Maybe that was because I hadn't logged into my US account and ebooks are sometimes more expensive internationally.

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  3. Though this book is honest, it often reads like one joke after another. The reader may still feel distanced from the real Tina Fey after reading Bossypants, but I think the opposite is true. The constant humor, the one-liners, the self-deprecation is who she really is, which makes her writing and comedy work.

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