Reviews for Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from down under to All Over

The average rating for Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from down under to All Over based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-29 00:00:00 Lonny Rach Foreign Correspondence was my first Geraldine Brooks book, and I immediately fell in love with the writing style that earned her a Pulitzer Prize for March and People of the Book. In this 200 page packed memoir, Brooks writes about growing up in Sydney, Australia and how having pen pals both local and international shaped her view of the world. She writes that hers was the last generation to live in an isolated Australia. Everyone finished university and for the most part left. Brooks' pen pals became her window to the world and she also longed to leave after she completed her schooling. Fast forward 20 years later. Brooks is a foreign correspondent for the a Wall Street Journal living back in Sydney. She finds all of her correspondence in her parents home and is determined to find her pen pals, which she does. Her travels take her to suburban New Jersey, Israel, and France as she observes where her pen pals are in life. Through her meetings with them, she realizes that the stable life she grew up with in Sydney was much more wholesome than that of some of her pen pals, and she wistfully longs for a life like that presently. Having had pen pals as a kid and pseudo pen pals on social media now, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. At a time when your whole life is the town you grow up in, having pen pals in another country broadens your view of the world and expands your horizons and hopes for the future. I actually had an Australian pen pal and longed for her letters that would come once a month. Then I fantasized about traveling to Australia one day as a way out of the monotony of day to day living. The pen pals Brooks had had a profound effect on her and she has either visited, worked, or lived in all of the countries where her friends lived. The best part of this for me was to see how a child's mind viewed the world. I could practically see her eyes light up as she ran to her yellow mailbox and open her letters. Now she is an award winning journalist and writer shaped by these childhood correspondences. I am giddy to read her other award winning books in the near future.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-09-09 00:00:00 Rahel Mischler I am gradually coming round to accepting the fact that memoirs are not my thing. Even when written by Geraldine Brookswho is one of my favourite authors - of fiction! Sadly I found this book to be quite uninteresting. I would have liked more of the authors experiences as a foreign correspondent and less about her pen pals who were not a very exciting bunch really. My fault for reading a memoir when I know I don't like them. I'll go back to sticking to just fiction and reminding myself that this is the same author who wrote the fantastic Caleb's Crossing