In some ways, this is a good essay collection to read while one is stuck at home. Throughout the essays, the author is focused on elsewhere, often wanting to be elsewhere, imagining elsewhere, sometimes thinking of places' past and his own past as connected (or disconnected) to place. On the other hand, there is a level of pain associated with reading about the travels of another - to a small Italian town to trace the paths of Monet, to Parisian squares, to Barcelona - when the possibility of one's own travel is on hold for the foreseeable future. Overall, this collection is insightful and is certainly worthy of literature awards. It's also one of those books I really had to work to read, not something I could just get lost in. ( )

Some of the essays in this collection are fairly straightforward pieces of travel writing. (Well, OK, very highbrow and introspective pieces of travel writing.) Others are personal essays or complicated philosophical musings. Throughout all of it, there are many recurring themes: memory, art, nostalgia, the author's inability to be in one place without longing for another, the experiences of being a Jew in exile.

Aciman's writing is eloquent and thoughtful and intimate and... I wish I liked it better than I did. Because, the truth is, most of it left me a bit cold. The most complex essays seemed to me to swirl back and forth, in a rather frustrating fashion, between genuinely profound insights, self-indulgence, and muddled obscurity. Sometimes, I would feel like he was getting at some really important psychological truths, but doing so through personal experiences I couldn't connect to at all. And there were moments where I found myself irritated by him: an admission that he was ashamed at having lived on a lower-middle-class street in his youth, another about having lied in his memoir, an occasional habit of slipping from "I" into "you" or "us" when describing experiences some of us are never going to be able to afford. All of which is probably unfair, but there it is. It's entirely possible that I am just not the right audience for this particular book. ( )

Elk hoofdstuk begint veelbelovend, overladen met wat al dan niet herinnerd wordt, en klimt langs associaties en weetjes en veronderstellingen naar dromerige, zongebruinde mijmeringen over wie en waar André Aciman is, of wil zijn. Of had willen zijn.

Maar Aciman lijkt bij momenten ook maar wat voor zich uit te mompelen en associeren. Zoals hij zelf graag verdwaalt in de steden, doolhofstraten, zich vasthaakt in gebouwen en binnenplaatsen, zo verliest de lezer zich samen met de schrijver in bon mots en vage algemeenheden over de ene abstractie in verhouding tot de andere. Een beetje dromerig soms, ‘geaffecteerd’ las ik ergens, … raakt hij het spoor van wat hij nu juist wilde schrijven wel eens bijster, of … raakte ik hem naar het einde van het boek toe gewoonweg beu … ( )

At first I was disappointed. Then I got into it. His theme seemed to be that he/we want what we don't have. If you are in Paris, it's not as good as you thought it would be. Also I discovered that his autobiographical essays in out of Egypt, we're not exactly true. Tom and I had just had a discussion about autobiographers being very free with the truth. ( )