Speaking With Strangers

The Story

Here, in her third memoir, American journalist and novelist, Mary Cantwell recounts how the breakdown of her marriage and her father's death left her feeling isolated and disconnected, craving new intimacies to compensate for the ones she had lost. Traveling on photographic assignments gave the author the opportunity to refresh her psyche and forge new bonds. Through a series of short travel vignettes, she constructs colorful characterizations of the eclectic gathering of characters she encounters from all corners of the world. From Australian sheep ranchers and Russian soldiers to novelists and ministers, strangers enter and exit her life absorbing her into conversations. Yet the author realizes that traveling provides a 'peculiar intimacy of people who will never see each other again, ' and we are left feeling that she will never find the intimacy for which she longs, providing extremely personal reflections on family, friends, and her inner-self.