There are some books that seem to speak to me. In fact, some authors do that, no matter what they write. And Janet Brown is one of them. Even before I read her first memoir, Tone Deaf in Bangkok (ThingsAsian Press, 2009), I’d become enamored with her B is for Bangkok (ThingsAsian Press, 2011), a children’s book my kids and I enjoy reading on a very regular basis.
And now she’s come out with Almost Home: The Asian Search of a Geographic Trollop (ThingsAsian Press, 2013). I devoured it in two days.
Almost Home follows Brown’s year and a half in Asia. After living in Bangkok (which she writes about in Tone Deaf), she returns back to the US where her two adult sons live. But Asia calls her back. To be more specific, Bangkok calls her back.
Janet Brown poses an interesting question. Can she, at the age of 60, live a content life in Bangkok yet still remain as close to her sons as she’d like? It’s something she ponders throughout the book.
The Bangkok she returns to has changed since she last lived there. But just as before, Brown is determined to find an apartment that’s tranquil and local and far from the maddening crowds of unassimilated expats. She tells humorous anecdotes about her new life in Bangkok, but also serious accounts of the mounting political violence that plagues the city soon after she returns there.
So she moves on to Hong Kong for a one-month visit. This is my favorite part, for obvious reasons. I inhaled every word she wrote about the Kowloon she experienced. And Chungking Mansions features prominently in this section. Janet Brown has spent months at the Holiday Guesthouse and knows the place like no other writer I’ve read.
She travels throughout the labyrinth that is Chungking Mansions as though it were home. And it is. It definitely is. Janet Brown comes to enjoy her mornings at the Starbucks across the street from the Mansions, for the normal coffee and the friendly baristas.
Brown also travels to Beijing, where she moves for a while, as well as Penang. The Beijing section is colorful and brings me up to date from when I last traveled there in 1991. Same with Penang, but that section differs from the others because Brown comes to a few realizations that both answer her question about home and guide her toward her next destination.
This book is lovely for its delicious writing, and also for Brown’s rich photographs. And if I may be so bold, I’d love for Janet Brown to write a memoir devoted to Kowloon. She could do it like no other!
I’m looking forward to reading Janet Brown’s Almost Home but with some trepidation. That’s because during a first-time visit to Thailand about a year ago I sat next to Janet, who was a stranger at the time, on an overnight train from Bangkok to Malaysia and in the course of some pleasant and interesting conversation Janet gifted me with a copy of her Tone Deaf in Bangkok. I didn’t read the book until returning to Melbourne, Australia but shortly thereafter began annoying my daughter, who was in the middle of finalizing accommodation plans for a Thailand trip (honeymoon actually) with my frequent and insistent references to Janet’s book. I’d say “you HAVE to read this, it was JUST LIKE THAT, and You HAVE to read this, this is EXACTLY what I remember but forgot, and, No one else will describe these things nearly as well or will even notice these things, and READ IT before you go (in a month’s time) so you’ll KNOW….” and so on. I’d even read select passages out loud, as my daughter seemed to be quite busy and might not have time, and so forth. For me, reading Tone Deaf in Bangkok completely returned me to Thailand and my own experiences there and I felt sad when I finished it, because I’d finished it (thank goodness Janet had (has) a blog. I’m just afraid that if I read Almost Home I will need to buy a ticket and pack a suitcase, or will at least feel more homesick for someplace. Actually, though, maybe the book would save me some money and a trip.
What a lovely story! Thank you so much! “Almost Home” continues where “Tone Deaf” left off, but it’s so much more than that. I, too, felt like I needed to return to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Beijing, and even Penang (you’ll understand more when you read it!). I love how you met her on a train. That must have been an amazing trip!