Wanderlust is Elizabeth Eaves’ memoir of her travels from her late teen years to her mid-30s, and like any travel memoir it suffers somewhat from the delusions of grandeur of its main character/author. The friend who lent it to me did so with the disclaimer that, “she’s a bit pretentious, but aren’t all travel writers? I think you have to be in order to think that other people are going to be interested in your travel diary.” My friend is not wrong.
I love to travel and so I’m primed to like a good travel memoir- Eat, Love, Pray, and Passage to Juneau were two that I kept close for a long time. Both of those authors, however, had real skill with language (come at me Elizabeth Gilbert haters) and also knew how to weave their inner development/thoughts with the external world that they were travelling through. Eaves attempts this, but is less successful. For the most part, each new place she lives in/travels through follows this pattern: new place, meet a boy, fall in love/lust with boy, wash, spin, repeat. Rather than give us many details about how the place changes her or draws out new understandings of herself/the world, what we get is mostly how this boy changes her. In addition to the lack of specificity about each place, she’s also not always a particularly likeable character- she abandons a boyfriend only to break up with him over the phone from the other side of the world (leaving him to sort out the payments on a house they own together!); she cheats on several boyfriends without ever indicating that she appreciated the effect it might have on those boyfriends; she clings to a boyfriend who makes her feel small because she’s in her 30’s and economically dependent on him, etc. All this being said, I don’t think all the criticism online directed at her is necessarily warranted. Yes she’s not always a likeable person, but it takes courage to put the warty version of yourself out there for the world’s digestion, and she isn’t sugar coating her bitter edges.
I also found emotional kinship with her at certain points, which I suppose makes sense given that my Cannonball handle is Wanderlust- I’m a travel addict too, and when that hit of a new place/new love come together it is a powerful drug. The moments that I found Eaves most compelling were where she is extrapolating on the transformative power of travel, both positive and negative- travel makes you braver and stronger and opens you up to new ways of living but also creates this high point for what it feels like to be alive, a point that is hard to reach when you’re back in the day to day grind that pays for those escapes.
I would recommend this one to other friends that have wanderlust, but I would probably give them the same warning my friend gave me- she’s a bit pretentious, but aren’t all travel writers?
