The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost
So…imagine that we’re 20 and deeply enmeshed in being “good girls”. We practice our viola daily for hours, we get good grades and we don’t get pulled over for speeding. Girls like us know what our next steps are after college. And the next. And the next. And there’s no time to lose in the battle to get those pieces all in place. So. Big question. Are we happy? Author Rachel Friedman finds herself not unhappy but no longer on a clear path to next when she falls off the viola wagon. So she goes to Ireland on a vague summer’s work visa, ends up in Galway and rethinks the direction of the rest of her life. While this is hardly a cause for pause for bad girls, it is supreme challenge for those gone good. Friedman astonishes herself, awakes her hidden wanderlust and goes down the path of no return (although she does collect a college degree on the way). Ireland, Australia, South America and a collision romance with a mysterious Kiwi, she veers off that good girl fast track and joins the world of aha.
This is a very satisfying tale. What does it offer us as readers other than a comforting sense of complicity? Edifying insight into hostel existence and bungee jumping, some useful information about why drinking beer in the Andes is a bad idea, and a contemplative ‘really it’s okay’ leap into alternative realities. Friedman, unable to shake a lifetime practice of thinking before jumping, records her conversations with herself as she pulls farther and farther away from her cultural norm. Diving against her better judgment into a fast river in Kakadu National Park near Darwin which may or may not harbor crocodiles, she makes it to ‘the other side.’ “I like backpacker me,” she journals. “She is easygoing. She talks less, listens more. She doesn’t wear a watch. “
If you find yourself slipping into wayward, It helps to have a wayward best friend and Friedman’s Galway find is Australian Carly who recognizes a fellow bushwacker when she sees one. “ I’m only working to make some euros to spend traveling around. The Australian dollar is worthless over here.” And that, in a nutshell is that. Thank god for transient work in pubs, the universal hostel traveler’s paycheck. Carly is a Free Spirit (following in her mother’s wandering footsteps) and Freidman learns more about how ‘free’ and ‘spirit’ connect as she travels with (and without) Carly.
Ultimately this entertaining book is a good candidate for the “Travel as Self Help’ genre as the author’s childhood involves the dual traumas as a child of divorce and growing up in snow belt Syracuse with parental expectations of academic excellence. Finding oneself by exploring the world is not a new therapy nor is writing about it but it’s supremely relevant for all of us who have been, will be or are contemplating change. While Friedman calls this finding “getting lost” she engagingly chronicles that journey for us aptly enough for us to eagerly look forward to her sequel –Kiwi Romance.
Wandering Booklust/MegRobbins
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