Questions of Travel

This is a gorgeous novel, with some wonderful, insightful writing and beautiful descriptions. It intertwines the stories of two very different characters, Laura from Sydney who has grown up without a mother and a distant father and Ravi who despite growing up fatherless and in poverty, receives a good education and becomes a maths lecturer and early website designer. Each must travel to find out who they are and what they want from life. Laura chooses to follow the backpacking trail to Europe when her aunt leaves her some money and ends up settling in London for some time until the thought of light and heat bring her back to Australia. Ravi suffers a tragic event and seeks asylum in Australia. They meet when they both find themselves show more working for a travel guide company, however neither has yet finished their journey and must continue on.

Although the writing is wonderful, almost lyrical in places and always enjoyable to read, I did find the novel dragged a little in the middle and I wondered where it was going. However it all becomes apparent once we reach the second part of the book where the main characters have arrived in Australia to begin the next phase of their lives. The book raises many questions about the purpose of travel and what we gain from it, it also addresses the difficult life suffered by asylum seekers who must wait in limbo while the courts decide their fate and raises questions about ethnicity and racism is this globalised age. I think this is also a book that will benefit from being re-read, with time taken to enjoy the journey without being concerned about what lies ahead. show less

Questions of Travel is an odd novel. The opening line is fantastic, but the tension it promises dissipates under a rambling prose that is reminiscent of a journey with end. The two characters are as dissimilar as two people can be, and their lives are equally unalike. Readers push forward hoping the their paths intertwine into a joint story that takes the novel to another level. Sadly, this never occurs.

The reader is left with a novel that really should be two separate stories. Laura’s life as a globe-trotter has nothing in common with Ravi’s struggles for survival. The near-constant political rebellions and fear that mark Ravi’s youth and early adulthood are a far cry from Laura’s almost posh life as a professional house sitter show more and someone who spends every free moment traveling around the world. There is something almost obscene about having the two narratives told together because it trivializes both experiences.

While Laura and Ravi are undoubtedly the two main heroes of the novel, the cast of characters is large and varied. The problem with this is that none of the secondary characters make much of an impression, and distinguishing between them proves difficult. This is made worse by the fact that the story jumps between Laura’s and Ravi’s perspectives, so readers must try to remember someone mentioned in passing in Laura’s section after having attempted to untangle the weave of Ravi’s acquaintances, friends, and family during his section. It is a situation that does not improve with the passage of the novel either, as the two main characters grow older and expand their circle of acquaintances.

Questions of Travel is a disappointment. It is the type of story that leaves you wondering what the point of it is and, more to the point, why you bothered to finish it in the first place. Its two meandering storylines never really merge as you expect them to do, and the characters’ fates seem more like a convenience rather than an attempt at closure. While the prose does have moments of brilliance, it too fails to portray any semblance of coherence and cohesiveness between Laura and Ravi; the bloated character list furthers the confusion. The end result is a novel that leaves readers wanting more in the way of a structured plot with well-developed characters whose lives connect more than superficially. Alas, that is not what you get. show less

From the moment I saw the cover of this book, I was intrigued – a distant ocean, land far away, a single bird…it just all seemed so peaceful. Like a holiday. Questions of Travel certainly covers a lot of journeys and travel, but not all of them for holiday purposes.

The novel opens with short, sharp chapters alternating between the childhoods of the two main characters, Laura and Ravi. Laura is an average Australian girl; Ravi is from Sri Lanka. Laura has a desire to paint, while Ravi chooses mathematics and computing. Laura receives an inheritance which allows her to travel, first to Bali and then to Europe. She takes up residence in England, then Italy and England again. In between the wanderlust and complex relationships though, show more is a strange longing for home. As an Australian myself, I can definitely relate to the things that bring a tear to our eyes – the faint scent of eucalyptus, the clear and strong light, sunny days…

Ravi’s life is in complete contrast to Laura’s. Civil unrest and the mangled body of his wife lead him to flee his homeland for Australia to seek asylum. Given the recent media coverage in Australia of the ‘boat people’, the insight into the life as someone on the fringe of Australian society is as fascinating as it gut-twisting. Do Australians really treat foreigners with that slight distain or in some cases, outright suspicion? I didn’t realise that there were so many hoops to jump for someone to become a legal citizen of this country while clearly being unable to return to their place of birth.

For the majority of this story, Laura and Raji’s lives don’t intersect. When they do, it’s not the relationship you expect, which is one of the things that keep this story interesting. The beautiful, lyrical prose that de Kretser writes is to be savoured, not devoured – you should read this book with complete abandonment to time and place (just as if you were on holiday). The glimpses that are revealed into both Raji and Laura’s lives are like an intricate puzzle that is stunning when complete. It’s the type of book that you’ll remember for a long, long time due to its beauty. Definitely one for those who love travel (the descriptions are amazing) and those who like being swept away by a book.

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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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Michelle de Kretser's Miles Franklin winning novel uses travel as a lens to look at two drastically different protagonists: Laura, a footloose middle-class Australia; and Ravi, a Sri Lankan caught up in that country's brutal civil war. The book follows their life journeys, which ultimately intersect at a travel publishing firm (where else?).

The first third of the novel mainly deals with the interminably boring Laura and her mundane roaming around the usual tourist spots of Asia and Europe. Just as the reader is about to nod off, de Kretser hits you with a head-snapping plot twist that transforms this novel into something very different. The pace and tension pick up from there but unfortunately de Kretser cannot sustain it. The story she show more tells of Ravi's experiences is emotional, nuanced and topical. However Laura's story is cliched and bathetic, unable to be saved by a surprise ending.

The questions of the title are posed through the key characters' stories. One is "what am I doing here?". Another is "why does everybody have to leave in the end?", immediately followed by "when will it be my turn to leave?'. These deep questions are a great theme for the novel, but could have been much more tellingly explored by cutting Laura's character to the bare minimum and placing the focus on Ravi's more compelling odyssey. In the process, a good editor could have cut 150 pages from an unnecessarily long novel. show less

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 show more 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. show less