“The twentieth century was best represented by an unwilling traveler. “I mean, think of the millions of soldiers mobilized by wars. And all the people made homeless because of them. Now the world is full of people who don’t belong where they end up and long for the places where they did.”

Gull on the beach. Rheban Beach, Tasmania. February 2021.

Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser

I found this an odd little book. While I do understand that the essence of the work was to explore how "life is what happens when you're making other plans", 528 pages is an awful lot to spend meandering about with little focus on what it is that they are wandering towards (or away from, which may be closer to the point).

There is an immense sadness that permeates throughout. While I am generally quite comfortable with ragged narrative arcs, multiple narrators or the complex weaving of interlinked stories, I must confess to not quite seeing the point of choosing these two characters.

Ravi - while less fully realised - was the more compelling of the two. Perhaps due to the more immediately wrenching of the personal narrative, I found myself much more forgiving of his aimlessness and seeming indifference to the currents moving around him.

In Laura, I found her aimlessness annoying. While she has her own traumas (as with the rest of us), they remained closeted in a web of privilege, and despite ample opportunity to recognise and grasp her potential and pull herself out of the miasma.

Again, perhaps the tepid petering out of things is the point that de Kretser is trying to make, and meaningless is the very meaning she wants to convey. If this is the case, one narrative arc would have achieved this is well as two, and at half the length, it may not have felt so tiresome.

⭐ ⭐ 1/2