Product Description

A wryly told, delightful melange of footloose chronicles by a sometimes anxious wanderer. Maxwell (I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly, 1997) is rather like the rest of us: wary of small planes and rushing rivers, yet also fond of wildlife. Unlike some of us, however, she gamely runs Idaho's Salmon River, takes a 37-hour train ride across the Gobi Desert (``insidious grit stormed the failing shell of that old railroad mollusk''), and snorkels among whales. Fly-fishing is Maxwell's raison d'etre, and readers will happily follow her as she searches for steelhead trout on a wild and secret Washington river and fishes a Mongolian waterway reputedly containing the heftiest salmon on earth (up to 200 pounds apiece). One need not be a fellow traveler to appreciate her jaunts; Maxwell's prose is wittily light-hearted. Repulsed by said Mongolian salmon, she declares, ``I'd be damned if I was going to set a world record with a fish that looked so much like Quasimodo in a mermaid suit. '' During an uncharacteristically urban trip to Italy, she comments, ``If the Italian Renaissance painters had been dentists, their dentures would have looked like Venice. Arcaded and cupolaed, welded together with fancy bridgework, riddled with elegant root canals, its yellowed buildings rising straight out of the sea, it looks, for all the world, like a floating grin. '' On her stubbornly eclectic route, Maxwell also journeys to Alaska with sled-dog champion Susan Butcher and her Alaskan huskies. She visits a huge colony of monarch butterflies; she encounters a giant toxic toad. And amid all the double entendres and sardonic asides, this outdoorswoman remains an informative naturalist. "

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1583173 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 252 pages

From Library Journal
In the first chapter, Maxwell (I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly: My Fly Fishing Rookie Season, LJ 4/15/97) states, "There are few accomplishments more gratifying in a woman's life than building her very own relationship with the whole wide world." Written for those who have ventured a bit themselves, this book supports her statement. In each chapter, Maxwell travels to a different place, like "mystical" Ireland, Alaska (to interview a dog "musher" and Iditarod racer), Oregon for steelhead fishing, and Mongolia for salmon fishing. The subject matter is interesting, but Maxwell writes in cliches, and her loose use of grammar detracts. She tends not to delve as deeply as she could into the purpose of her travels and the people and animals she encounters. Yet even with these flaws, Maxwell's world travels will be of interest to many public library patrons.?Melisa Fiumara, North Tonawanda P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A wryly told, delightful melange of footloose chronicles by a sometimes anxious wanderer. Maxwell (I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly, 1997) is rather like the rest of us: wary of small planes and rushing rivers, yet also fond of wildlife. Unlike some of us, however, she gamely runs Idaho's Salmon River, takes a 37-hour train ride across the Gobi Desert (``insidious grit stormed the failing shell of that old railroad mollusk''), and snorkels among whales. Fly-fishing is Maxwell's raison d'ˆtre, and readers will happily follow her as she searches for steelhead trout on a wild and secret Washington river and fishes a Mongolian waterway reputedly containing the heftiest salmon on earth (up to 200 pounds apiece). One need not be a fellow traveler to appreciate her jaunts; Maxwell's prose is wittily light-hearted. Repulsed by said Mongolian salmon, she declares, ``I'd be damned if I was going to set a world record with a fish that looked so much like Quasimodo in a mermaid suit.'' During an uncharacteristically urban trip to Italy, she comments, ``If the Italian Renaissance painters had been dentists, their dentures would have looked like Venice. Arcaded and cupolaed, welded together with fancy bridgework, riddled with elegant root canals, its yellowed buildings rising straight out of the sea, it looks, for all the world, like a floating grin.'' On her stubbornly eclectic route, Maxwell also journeys to Alaska with sled-dog champion Susan Butcher and her Alaskan huskies. She visits a huge colony of monarch butterflies; she encounters a giant toxic toad. And amid all the double entendres and sardonic asides, this outdoorswoman remains an informative naturalist. Though she'll go to almost any length to muscle out a story, Maxwell writes with refreshingly little machismo. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Adventure Anywhere
Jessica Maxwell has a knack for finding adventure on her way to the refrigerator. Fortunately for her readers, she chooses to venture further away from home and take us along as we whisk from page to page. Maxwell shows us that adventure is trying something new, whether flyfishing in Mongolia or bracing the rapids and fears of whitewater rafting. Through her refreshing literary style, I felt like I was trotting after her in Alaska, Ireland, Italy and elsewhere. Most of all, the book is a fabulous reminder that adventure is in the eye of the adventurer, and to step outside one's comfort level brings life's richest rewards.

Adventure Anywhere
Jessica Maxwell has a knack for finding adventure on her way to the refrigerator. Fortunately for her readers, she chooses to venture further away from home and take us along as we whisk from page to page. Maxwell shows us that adventure is trying something new, whether it's flyfishing in Mongolia or bracing the rapids and fears of whitewater rafting. Her refreshing literary style creates a sense of place that allowed me to tag along to Alaska, Ireland, Italy and elsewhere. Most of all, the book is a fabulous reminder that adventure is in the eye of the adventurer, and to step outside one's comfort level leads to life's richest rewards.

Adventure for Girls
I resented the hell out of this book, and about midway through I realized why. It's not really adventure writing - it's adventure writing *for girls*. Most of these articles would only qualify as fluff or travel pieces, or maybe reflective essays, if they'd been written by men. Because the author is a woman - well, because she's a woman, a trip to Venice qualifies as adventure. A drive in Ireland qualifies as adventure. Fishing in Canada qualifies as adventure. In other words, this is an adventure travel book that only features travel - and fear.

Fear is a necessary component of any adventure article or book, but fear shouldn't own the author and the story; in Femme D'Adventure, it does. Even the introduction, by Lorian Hemingway, talks about how much women have to fear these days, and surely we do, but I *live* the mundane terrors of a woman's daily life - I don't need to read about them in an adventure travel book. From adventure writing, I expect exceptional fear, life-affirming fear, thrilling fear, and this book is sorely lacking in that department. I mean, I was awfully glad to read that the author got over her fear of flying (and, in another article, her fear of rafting). But if I'd wanted to read that kind of story, I'd have bought a self-help book. In an adventure story, I want fear induced not by boarding an airplane but by jumping out of one.

Another irritating aspect of this "adventure for girls" writing is the language. It's cute to the point of inducing nausea. "If the Italian Renaissance painters had been dentists, their dentures would have looked like Venice," the author informs us. Fine. What an adorable sentence that is. Of course, it's also meaningless. And I can't call to mind any other adventure writer OR travel writer who relies so heavily on alliteration. You can only read phrases like "the wicked Wicklow wind," something she repeats more than once in her article on Ireland, so many times before you start reaching for something a little less cute.

Maybe I'd have liked this book a little more if it hadn't been so clearly marketed as adventure writing, right down to the word "adventure" in the title. And then again, considering the language, maybe not. Either way, though, this book mostly serves not to show us, as women, how far we've come, but rather how far we still have to go.