Book Thirty One 2014: 

Questions Of Travel by Michelle de Kretser

So this is book number three after Donal Ryan and Marie NDiaye from this year’s Impac Prize list and all three have been top notch just to differing degrees.

This is based around two very simple but different people, one, middle class and from Australia who ends up in London and working as a travel writer before ending up back in Australia again, the other poor and from Sri Lanka who loops from there to Australia for very different reasons.

Persist with this one. After about 80 pages I was willing to give up, the thing that kept me on board was her sometimes breathtaking language and imagery. As with so many books I seem to stumble across, after 100 pages or so something clicks in my head and her jigsaw started to take shape.

It’s strong in character, internal monologue and well drawn location and incredible in places in language (I actually felt like I’d been to Sri Lanka, Sydney and Naples after I’d read it) but it’s a little long and a touch stretched out towards the end.

Not the best book from the IMPAC list this year but well, well above average and well worth the read.