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Essays on Travel and Place (River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize)
by Joan Frank
A meditation on time and place based on the author's travel experiences.
Through the author's travels in Europe and the United States, Try to Get Lost explores the quest for place that compels and defines us: the things we carry, how politics infuse geography, media's depictions of an idea of home, the ancient and modern reverberations of the word "hotel," and the ceaseless discovery generated by encounters with self and others on familiar and foreign ground. Frank posits that in fact time itself may be our ultimate, inhabited place--the "vastest real estate we know," with a "stunningly short" lease.
"For all its attentiveness to beauty and loss, this wise and humorous collection is also a moving record of anticipation and expectation...Philosophical, sophisticated literary forays that are a pleasure to dwell in." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Frank's rich, imagery-driven prose lends immediacy to her observations. This is a perfect book for readers to take on their travels, even if they're only going as far as the armchair." - Publishers Weekly
"Whether sparkling with enthusiasm or turning downright curmudgeonly, the essays of Try to Get Lost record the ups and downs of travel with wit, insight, and unfailing honesty." - Foreword Reviews
"Try to Get Lost is a bold, engaging disquisition on the perils and promises of travel: both cranky and wise, worldly and cultivated, humorous and rueful, its every sentence sparkles. All in all, it is thoroughly entertaining, a sophisticated pleasure." - Phillip Lopate, author of A Mother's Tale
"Joan Frank animates her loving and irreverent essays with a vital, unspoken question: How do the human tendencies to idealize, project, rank, divide, and dismiss get in the way of reading the world with accuracy, with complexity? Try to Get Lost is an ongoing act of awe that gives itself permission to roll its eyes now and then. It's necessary. It's brilliant." - Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship
"Filled with wit, soul, and insight, each of the essays in this radiant collection offers not only a layered and revelatory portrait of the places that enchant and haunt Frank--from Paris to Florence to her hometown of Phoenix with its many ghosts--but also a profound meditation on the possibility of discovery, the inevitability of loss, and the power of both to unmake and remake us." - Jessie Chaffee, author of Florence in Ecstasy: A Novel
This information about Try to Get Lost was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joan Frank is the award-winning author of a number of books of literary fiction and essays including Because You Have To: A Writing Life and All the News I Need: A Novel. She lives with her husband, playwright Bob Duxbury, in the North Bay Area of California.
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