Tone Deaf in Bangkok: And Other Places

Janet Brown's TONE DEAF IN BANGKOK is a travelogue, to be sure. Yet it is more, so much more. It's also an investigation into how dislocated we can become by ourselves, by our priorities and by all that we demand of the cultures in which we live. As shown in any number of Ms. Brown's marvelously conceived essays, she moved to Thailand as much to see the world as to reconcile just who she was as a person. That she has a gift for spotting the universal in the exotic makes this collection all the more profound. She writes of heat and love and peppers and sexual perception and stray cats and phonetics and alienation and cheap shoes and paranormal frights and pot and Scotch and the seasons of Thai feminine beauty and of course, the pig-slop delicacy of durian. A highly recommended travelogue for anyone who wishes to explore not only SE Asia, but the complexites of one woman's soul.

Twenty years ago, when I started working as a bookseller at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, I discovered women's travel writing. I devoured everything I could get my hands on, from Mary Morris to Mary Kingsley. But after a few years, I grew bored ... I felt as if I had read all the good stuff and the well had run dry. Nearly every time I picked up a new book, I discovered the same old whining disguised as humor, the same old self-absorption, the same old tale about the same old quirky guy, and the same old absence of place. Rare was the book that got me excited about a destination. It has been ages since I have loved a piece of travel literature (written by a man or a woman), and so when I read "Tone Deaf in Bangkok," I was thrilled. This is a good travel book, and it is a good book, period. Janet Brown writes truthfully without needing to expose every raw nerve; sometimes it is what she does not expose that is the most revealing. Her prose is simple, while her use of language is enviable. Yes, she writes about herself, but within a context, and it is that context---Thailand---that is the star of her book. Its smells, its flavors, its moods. Whether writing about alley cats, the Skytrain or ghosts, she shares a Thailand that readers rarely have the opportunity to experience. I have been to Bangkok numerous times, and on my most recent trip, I found myself looking at it in a different way, and much more deeply, because of this book.

This is an insider's view of Bangkok and is richly nuanced. Think of it as My Bangkok; it will give you a real taste treat of what it is like to live in the hustle of modern Bangkok and some surprising glimpses of rural Thailand. Sean O'Reilly, Editor-at-Large Travelers' Tales