Away from Home: Canadian Writers in Exotic Places

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

That overworked phrase “the global village” is much bruited about of recent years. Travel is so much simpler and faster than ever before; everyone goes everywhere; and there are no surprises left to discover or to beguile... so they say.

Away from Home is proof that it isn’t so. In this collection of fascinating travel pieces, some of Canada’s most talented writers of the past and present, wanderers all, share their thoughts and impressions of a world so richly varied, so endlessly astonishing, that one longs to drag out the suitcase and take to the road. Twenty-seven pieces of varying lengths, dating from the 1840s to the present, offer glimpses of every corner of the globe, as seen through the eyes of a gallery of gifted observers; Leacock’s London; Richler’s Paris; Ethel Wilson’s Egypt; Morley Callaghan’s Paris; anthologist Kildare Dobbs’s own Morocco. The list goes on and on, each piece tantalizingly evocative. This is armchair adventure at its best, embellished by the delicate illustrations of Tony Urquhart. Although at first glance this appears a handsome, well-turned-out volume, on closer examination one can only wonder how it can have escaped the much-needed attentions of the proofreader. There are more typos and transpositions in this text than would be forgivable in a daily newspaper. Pity.