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A review by paige_docx
The Art of Traveling Strangers by Zoe Disigny
adventurous
emotional
informative
slow-paced
Thank you to NetGalley and Amplify Publishing Group for providing my with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
While I believe there is a target audience that would really enjoy this book, unfortunately I was not one of them. Because I probably would not have finished this book if it hadn't been an ARC and I don't think I'm the target audience I won't be giving it a star rating, although for me personally it would probably be closer to a 2.
Claire is a mid-30s art history professor who is currently devastated after both her husband and the man she was having an affair with have left her. Realising that without her husband’s income it will be difficult to make ends meet as a single mother to her daughter, Claire decides to spend the summer as a personal art history tour guide across Europe to Viv. Viv appears quite strange at first and the two don’t really mesh, but the two grow closer and learn from each other in their journey across Italy and France.
Let’s start with the positive. The author herself was an art history professor and her knowledge and passion for the subject really come through in her writing. I’ve never been very interested in the different artistic periods, nor have I ever been able to keep all the different terms straight, so I do think this aspect of the book would be more appealing to people who are already interested in the subject. I was far more interested in the descriptions of the European cities that Claire and Viv visit, as well as the museums and cathedrals on Claire’s art tour.
Now for the negatives. Unhappy in her marriage, Claire seeks therapy and eventually enters into an affair with her therapist, Alec. Eventually Claire’s husband figures out she’s cheating and leaves her, and following this Alec also breaks it off with Claire to try to fix his own marriage. I found the affair subplot unnecessary as all it did was make Claire unlikeable. We are told Claire’s husband Kurt is selfish, manipulative and downright vindictive. Because of this I would have much preferred for the marriage to fall apart on its own without the need for infidelity to vilify Claire. The next thing that really bugged me is that for no discernible reason this book is set in the 1980s. Practically, this adds nothing to the story, and you are only ever reminded of it when one of the characters says something like “primo” (Viv’s favourite adjective), “whammo”, or “what a buncha yahoos.” However, being set in the ‘80s provides context for Claire’s fundamental misunderstanding of mental health and anxiety, as well as Viv’s casual homophobia. More than once throughout the book Claire fears that Viv will go off the rails after she learns that Viv has suffered from panic attacks in the past. Viv, on the other hand, refers to speculation over artists like Da Vinci and Michelangelo’s sexuality as “bad mouthing” them. This stems from a poor relationship with her brother, who is gay, and being ridiculed for her brother’s sexuality when she was in high school. I think this could have been explored in a productive way but I was uncomfortable with the author’s use of the f-slur even if the book is set in a time when it was widely considered acceptable.
While I believe there is a target audience that would really enjoy this book, unfortunately I was not one of them. Because I probably would not have finished this book if it hadn't been an ARC and I don't think I'm the target audience I won't be giving it a star rating, although for me personally it would probably be closer to a 2.
Claire is a mid-30s art history professor who is currently devastated after both her husband and the man she was having an affair with have left her. Realising that without her husband’s income it will be difficult to make ends meet as a single mother to her daughter, Claire decides to spend the summer as a personal art history tour guide across Europe to Viv. Viv appears quite strange at first and the two don’t really mesh, but the two grow closer and learn from each other in their journey across Italy and France.
Let’s start with the positive. The author herself was an art history professor and her knowledge and passion for the subject really come through in her writing. I’ve never been very interested in the different artistic periods, nor have I ever been able to keep all the different terms straight, so I do think this aspect of the book would be more appealing to people who are already interested in the subject. I was far more interested in the descriptions of the European cities that Claire and Viv visit, as well as the museums and cathedrals on Claire’s art tour.
Now for the negatives. Unhappy in her marriage, Claire seeks therapy and eventually enters into an affair with her therapist, Alec. Eventually Claire’s husband figures out she’s cheating and leaves her, and following this Alec also breaks it off with Claire to try to fix his own marriage. I found the affair subplot unnecessary as all it did was make Claire unlikeable. We are told Claire’s husband Kurt is selfish, manipulative and downright vindictive. Because of this I would have much preferred for the marriage to fall apart on its own without the need for infidelity to vilify Claire. The next thing that really bugged me is that for no discernible reason this book is set in the 1980s. Practically, this adds nothing to the story, and you are only ever reminded of it when one of the characters says something like “primo” (Viv’s favourite adjective), “whammo”, or “what a buncha yahoos.” However, being set in the ‘80s provides context for Claire’s fundamental misunderstanding of mental health and anxiety, as well as Viv’s casual homophobia. More than once throughout the book Claire fears that Viv will go off the rails after she learns that Viv has suffered from panic attacks in the past. Viv, on the other hand, refers to speculation over artists like Da Vinci and Michelangelo’s sexuality as “bad mouthing” them. This stems from a poor relationship with her brother, who is gay, and being ridiculed for her brother’s sexuality when she was in high school. I think this could have been explored in a productive way but I was uncomfortable with the author’s use of the f-slur even if the book is set in a time when it was widely considered acceptable.