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A review of Backpack

by Emily Barr

When Londoner Tansy Harris strikes out on her own to explore Asia, she finds love, bad food, good beer, and a danger she could never have imagined.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Santiago
About Jennifer Santiago

Backpack Emily Barr's debut novel, Backpack, is a classic example of the old adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover." At first glance, it seems to be a Bridget Jones-esque romp: spunky yet self-deprecating British twenty-something obsesses about drinking and smoking, loves boy, loses boy, backpacks across Asia to assert her independence, meets new boy. And to some degree, what you see is what you get. The novel is indeed packed with single-girl empowerment and laugh-out-loud witticisms.

However, heroine Tansy Harris has much more on her plate than Bridget's calorie-counting and cute-boss woes. From a stint in the hospital (a result of a drug overdose on the day of her alcoholic mother's funeral) to a newly-discovered half-brother to a frat-boy boyfriend who bails out on her on the very eve of a long-planned vacation, Tansy desperately needs to get out of London.

Tansy's supposedly liberating, rejuvenating backpacking adventure gets off to a very inauspicious start, however. Her first stop is Vietnam-her initial sojourn into the filthy capital city is a riotously funny barrage of begging children, waiters who refer to her as "Mr. Brown" (having learned their limited English from books), death-defying attempts to cross the street, and venomous haggling with bicycle-cab drivers.

With the help of a friendly pair of Australian backpackers, Tansy slowly gets acclimated to Asia and begins to enjoy herself. But she is haunted by the inescapable news of a serial killer stalking blonde British backpackers in Southeast Asia, a pattern of murders that seems to be tracing her very path across the continent. Despite this, Tansy makes friends, gets tanned, finds love, finds closure, and finds herself.

While the serial killer subplot seems gratuitous and even silly for most of the novel, stay tuned for the thrilling and completely unexpected conclusion.

Is Tansy keeping a potentially deadly secret? Is everyone in Tansy's life who they seem to be? Will she find lasting love with her backpacker boyfriend or ditch him when her lost London love reappears? Look past the fluffy exterior, and stuff a copy of Emily Barr's top-notch novel in your "Backpack."

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: Backpack

Copyright © by Jennifer Santiago, 2002

Reviewed by Jennifer Santiago:
-- The Lovely Bones - by Alice Sebold
-- 30 Minute Meals - by Rachael Ray
-- Raising Blaze - by Debra Ginsberg
-- Backpack - by Emily Barr
-- You Are Not a Stranger Here - by Adam Haslett
-- Bookends - by Jane Green
-- A Confederacy of Dunces - by John Kennedy Toole
-- Ash Wednesday - by Ethan Hawke
-- All Saints' Day - by Brent Benoit
-- The Stepford Wives - by Ira Levin
-- The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating - by David M. Buss
-- Literary New Orleans - by Judy Long (Editor)
-- The Sopranos Family Cookbook - by Allen Rucker; Recipes by Michele Scicolone
-- Atonement - by Ian McEwan
-- The Crimson Petal and the White - by Michel Faber
-- Midnight Bayou - by Nora Roberts
-- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - by Ann Brashares
-- The Zygote Chronicles - by Suzanne Finnamore
-- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - by J.K. Rowling









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