I picked up for this book for a kind of strange reason which I won't go into detail here, but it became a great on the go book...when I only had a few minutes I turned to it.
I'm not much for memoir or travel memoir, but I ended up really enjoying this one--less for the depictions of living in China and Mitch's experience and more for all the ways it reminded me of expat life and that perpetual feeling of adolescence, the struggle to figure out what the heck you're doing with your life as the days slip by and nothing is changing and you're not even sure it should.
I only lived in Japan for a short time, but a lot of these feelings were familiar to me. A lot of the reasons I left when I did was to avoid ending up there forever and not really going anywhere, but there are definitely times I still wonder if that was the right choice since I sort of still feel like I'm not really going anywhere.
This book is not really about censorship in China, although Moxley explains how it worked at the newspaper he first worked at. And it's not really about China...it's about a young man who goes to another country and has some experiences and tries to figure out what he's doing with his life.
It's an interesting read, though, particularly because he went to Mongolia!! (I've been there) and the stuff surrounding the Olympics was interesting, too. Also, he's pretty self-aware that he has some less than stellar character moments, so there's that.
Basically, an easy and pleasant read!
Review copy received from Harper Perennial!
Post a Comment
Thank you for taking the time to comment! I appreciate hearing your thoughts.