The Size of the World

Kudos to Silber for her courage in tackling subjects that are complicated and controversial: war, colonialism, attraction to exoticism. These interconnected stories/settings are well-researched and peopled with individuals who speak in believable voices. The Size of the World is a novel that, as its title suggests, will expand our hearts and our minds, and will hopefully, ultimately, make us more human(e).

Silber's novel, told in a series of short stories, brilliantly does just what the title promises. The size of the world expands and contracts through the voices of Silber's characters. With great skill Silber weaves the lives of her characters together in such a way that, what reads like a collection of short stories, evolves into a connection which makes for a wonderful novel. Told in the first person, each character becomes a personality in their own right, inhabiting their own geological location and their own era, yet Silber manages to connect one with another. A wonderful story....beautifully told ! This book came to me through LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program. Being able to "preview" ARC copies is so much fun, it helps so much to be able to pass on "word of mouth" recommendations. This book gets a big thumbs up !

Tightly drawn stories in exotic milieus, with elements of humor, danger and drama. These narratives are densely packed with detail which sometimes makes for slow reading. But they're well worth the effort.

Silber makes a unique argument in The Size of the World, framing her narrative around the tangential relationships of a number of characters, beginning in the early days of the Vietnam War, when two engineers from Arizona are sent to troubleshoot problems with planes that have been lost for no apparent reason. Like fish out of water, Ernst and Toby apply their specific skills to the problem, but Toby, soon enamored of Vietnam, then Thailand, falls in love, marries and spends the following years in Thailand, pursuing a series of jobs. Left behind in America is an old girlfriend, Kit, who takes up the next thread of the novel, handing her tale off and increasing the scope of the story to 1924 Siam, a carefully structured theme laying the groundwork for the random connection that follow. In what is essentially a collection of related short stories, Corrine's adventure begins when she leaves Florida after the death of her parents in 1924 to join Owen, her older brother, who travels the country in search of tin for a trading company. It is Owen, sophisticated and uncommitted, who introduces Corey to a country that inevitably seduces her, unable to make herself leave even after Owen returns to America. These particular characters take us through the important events of the following decades, the stock market crash in America, two world wars and a colonial presence in Siam that is finally on the wane. Ranging from Vietnam and Thailand, Italy and Mexico, Florida, New Jersey and San Francisco, Silber deftly connects her protagonists to time and place, the evolution of political change and the ties that bind one family to another. At the heart of each simple tale is the expansion of interests, the brief, but intense couplings of personality to place, particularly an affection for Thailand, where uncomplicated people struggle through daily lives. In each case there is a central character who reaches farther than the near horizons, who embraces differences and reaps the rewards of unprejudiced curiosity, albeit often limed with loneliness and dimmed expectations. Of course, practicalities intervene and people are forced to accept the constraints they have chosen, but it is their awakened passions that lend such humanity to this novel, the fascination of exploring a wider world that awaits the few who aspire to a different kind of life. Even back in the states, Thailand calls, its citizens undergoing the random violence of world events, all consumed in the shock of 9/11 decades later. Filled with the hopefulness of a few brave souls, adventure calls to these Americans, richer for the experience. Luan Gaines/ 2008.