Travel inspiration
Adventures from your couch.
Argentina
I’ve been getting inspired for Argentina so have read the following novels to help me picture Buenos Aires before we land and give me a taste of some of the country’s history and culture.
The Gods of Tango by Carolina de Robertis: this was a compelling story of a young Italian migrant girl who arrives in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 20th Century. She thinks she is going to meet up with her husband (who she married by proxy back in Italy) only to discover he has been killed in a political demonstration. Realising she is in a precarious position, Leda transforms herself into a male tango musician to make a living and avoid the dangers of being a single female in a volatile and violent city. What makes this story so interesting is the way we begin to see that Leda’s initial identity change as a means to survive is actually a sexual and social emancipation.
Who is Vera Kelly? By Rosalie Knecht: This is the first novel in a series of three and sent me down a rabbit hole reading all of them. Vera is a young American CIA agent who has been sent to Argentina to infiltrate a student activist group in 1962 Buenos Aires. The political situation is becoming increasingly fractured and Vera soon isn’t sure whose side she should be on. A great page turner and light weight crime novel: I became very fond of Vera as a naive and uncertain woman trying to find herself in a world that is not particularly accepting of her sexuality. The series traces her personal development in an engaging and nuanced way and each novel has a stand-alone crime to be solved.
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: I took a diversion to Sicily in anticipation of a trip there in early October. This classic novel was written by a real Sicilian prince in 1957 and was sadly published posthumously so he never got to see the impact his text had upon the country. It is told through the perspective of an aging prince, Don Fabrizio, during the time of Italy’s formation as a republic. The gentle satire of the fading aristocracy is superb and the detailed descriptions of his various palazzos, furnishings and clothing brings this part of Sicily’s rich history to life. His pragmatic acceptance of the “changing of the guard” is underscored with a vulnerable sentimentality for the aristocracy and hierarchy of society. You also get a few chapters told through other narrative voices such as the family’s Jesuit priest when he returns home to visit his family and the aging unmarried daughter of Fabrizio. These add yet another layer of insight into life in 19th Century Sicily. There’s also a new film adaptation of this novel coming out later in 2025 so I’m looking forward to seeing how they bring the book to life.
Hades Argentina by Daniel Loedel: This was a very bleak and dark novel (inspired by the experiences of the author’s stepsister) which shifted back and forth between the late 1980s and the mid 1970s at the height of Argentina’s “dirty war”. It took me a while to get into and to also realise magical realism was an element the author was using to have his protagonist confront his terrible past. It is really the story of unrequited love between the protagonist Tomas and his childhood friend, the enigmatic and sometimes cruel, Isabel. We quickly realise that in a desperate attempt to make Isabel love him, Tomas has agreed to go undercover in one of the secret interrogation centres in the heart of Buenos Aires. He does this to gather inside intelligence for the communist guerrilla group Isabel has joined. The main character spends a lot of time soul searching. His former mentor, a powerful General in the army, comes to him as a ghost to take him back to all the places of his past as he wrestles with what he could have done differently or better to make life take a different trajectory.
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig: This is a classic from Argentinian writer, Marcel Puig. I vaguely remember watching a film adaptation with William Hurt in it made in the 1990s but really couldn’t recall much about the plot.The whole novel is in the form of a dialogue between two prisoners in an unnamed Argentinian prison. One prisoner is Molina, whom we soon find out has been arrested for sex offences against a minor and his cell mate is Valentin, a political prisoner. Molina recounts the plots of old films in an effort to buoy Valentin’s spirits and distract him from crippling stomach cramps and fevers. They start with a wary distance but slowly the wild tales bring the men together in an unexpected way and you hear snippets of their real lives between the fantastical cinematic stories. There is also a very compelling twist which I won’t reveal so as not to spoil the plot but the pace picks up after this revelation as you soon are not sure who is to be believed in this unlikely but slowly evolving friendship.
Brazil
The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Pebbles: This choice was a shift to Brazil in order to mirror the travels I was making through South America. It actually had a similar tone to the earlier book I’d read called “The Gods of Tango”. Two young girls meet on a sugar cane plantation near Recife in the far northeastern part of Brazil at the turn of the 20th Century. One is an orphaned kitchen hand and the other the child of the plantation owners. Their unexpected friendship sets in train an epic story of love, samba music, the seedy underworld of 1920s Rio, Hollywood and complicated sexual entanglements. It was told with flashbacks and flash forwards when we realise that the protagonist/narrator Dores is recalling her lifetime with Graca whom she tells us from the beginning has died in tragic circumstances. It does take the whole 528 pages to find out exactly what those circumstances were and by using this teaser as the main thread through the novel, the author cleverly ensures you can’t put it down. Both women and the cast of eccentric characters in their world are vividly portrayed. I was intrigued to read the author originally started with the plan to write a fictionalised version of the life of Carmen Miranda but decided to re-write the novel to create her own original leads. It was a wonderful fusion of Brazilian social and political history, the evolution of samba music as well as a highly intense and complicated love story between two very complicated women. I really enjoyed this one!
Canada
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel:This was a gripping novel by a Canadian author I hadn’t encountered before. Written in 2014, it eerily creates a world which is destroyed by a mysterious virus called the Georgia Flu. I kept feeling so unsettled that she had managed to write something that felt very prescient of our COVID experience just with the complete breakdown of society added in. The novel is so clever in the way it weaves about 4 different character´s lives together before and during the collapse of civilisation. It starts with the death of a famous actor on stage during a performance of King Lear in a Toronto theatre then moves back and forth in time unfolding the lives of a number of tightly and loosely connected people related to his life – his ex wife, his best friend, a little girl actor in the play and a man who leaps up from the audience to give him CPR. There is a deep sadness in each of the characters as they navigate this apocalypse and try to re-build their lives in new ways. The novel takes a fairly common speculative fiction trope but does something very human with it as Mandel builds their lives bit by bit and tries to show some of the enduring traits and desires we have even in the face of terrible adversity.
Spain
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Somehow I missed reading much Hemingway throughout my reading life so I downloaded an omnibus of his works and embarked on reading two of the classics set in Spain. this
novel felt very much of its age of the Lost Generation as it followed the exploits of an American journalist spending his summer with a group of typically 1920s decadents. He is in love with Englishwoman Lady Brett Ashley but she’s married to a useless bankrupt Lord who keeps her somehow in an indulgent life. In turn she is the focus of an obsessive lust by American naif Jake Barnes. The span of their travels from Paris to Pamplona to San Sebastián is as indulgent as it sounds. I actually loved this book – you could palpably feel the heat and the drinks on the balconies of balmy summer Spanish nights. There was so much drinking and fighting and affairs. But there was also vivid descriptions of trout fishing and bull fighting that made this part of Spain come to life. It was ridiculous and wonderful.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
This novel took a very dramatic turn from the Pamplona one. It is set during the Spanish Civil War and follows the tribulations of Robert Jordan who is caught up with an anti fascist guerrilla group in the mountains of central Spain. He has a mission to blow up a bridge in one of the mountain villages to divert the Fascist forces but gets very sidetracked by a passionate love affair with a local Spanish woman, Maria, as well as all the complexities of the guerrilla group. There are many vivid characters and moments but also lots of overly written diversions which frustrated me. It did keep me going to the end and I learnt a lot about the war but felt indulgent and overwrought at times and could have done with some good editing.
Ireland
The Good People by Hannah Kent
Weirdly I tried to read this many years ago and hated it. It was a rare book I gave up halfway. But while in Ireland I tried again and found it a completely different experience. I actually loved it. As we drove the Ring of Kerry, it was incredible to read of the lives of these villagers just outside the town of Killarney in the 1800s. The tragedy of the “stolen child” Michael is portrayed so movingly and powerfully. You get swept up into the ancient beliefs of the “good people” as Kent shapes Nance and Nora with such empathy. Poor Maggie is an innocent bystander caught up in the madness. The harshness of life in County Kerry in this century is rendered just as vividly as Iceland in the magnificent ‘Burial Rites”. It is amazing what a change in circumstances and context can do for a reading experience.
Scotland
The Firebird (Slains #2) by Susanna Kearsley
This is the second book in the series that I had read a while ago. The first book, The Winter Sea, was a great insight into a period of Scottish history I was unfamiliar with. The novels are all set during the time when Scotland had been forced into accepting an English king when they believed the rightful king James and his descendants had been waiting it out in France for the right time to return.
The Vanished Days (Slain #3) by Susanna Kearsley