Travel Writing

Peter Ferry is a storyteller and his debut novel, "Travel Writing," is one terrific story. The novel's dedication is the first clue that Ferry has chosen to write something a little different to mark his first time out. It will not take long for alert readers to notice that the three people to whom the book is dedicated have the same names as three of its main characters, nor that the author himself is the novel's narrator. Soon enough, the reader is wondering what is real and what is not - and that is half the fun of "Travel Writing." Fictional Peter Ferry (as well as real life Peter Ferry) is an English teacher who makes a few bucks on the side writing newspaper travel pieces. He is also a born storyteller and he motivates and inspires his high school students by example, often telling them on-the-fly stories in class, rather than by preaching the mechanics of writing. All in all, Ferry is pretty content with his life, but all of that changes one winter night when he witnesses a car crash that claims the life of a young Asian woman. Only moments before her death, Ferry had noticed the woman's erratic driving before she pulled alongside him at a stoplight. The two make brief eye contact as Ferry realizes the woman is either too drunk or too ill to drive safely but before he can intervene she speeds away to her death. Realizing that his was the last face the woman would ever see, Ferry becomes haunted by his inaction, always wondering if he could have saved Lisa Kim's life by acting more quickly and decisively. This is the story Peter Ferry chooses to tell his high school English class, a story of one man's personal obsession with the death of a woman he never knew in life but comes to know intimately after her death. Having failed to save her life, Ferry is determined to find out why she died. He is so obsessed with solving the mystery of Lisa Kim that he is soon neglecting his work and his live-in girlfriend to the degree that he is in danger of losing both. As Ferry comes closer and closer to the truth about what happened that winter night, readers will find themselves intrigued by the truths he uncovers. But did any of this actually happen or is it all just an exercise being used by Peter Ferry to make a point about creative writing to his English class? Just about the time one begins to forget that Ferry is a writing teacher, the author yanks him back to his classroom to discuss the story with his young students. Further complicating things is the book's narrative structure. The story is told from the past to the present with flashbacks and related travel pieces interspersed throughout, a choice that further helps to blur truth and which leads to the novel's clever ending. Did it happen? I found that I was not sure, and that I really did not care much, because I enjoyed the story for what it is, just as Mr. Ferry's English class is so intrigued by it. I did have great fun along the way trying to decide whether or not t

Peter Ferry, teacher and writer, offers his first novel, starring Peter Ferry, teacher and writer. When Ferry the character witnesses a traffic accident that kills a young woman he's never met, he grows increasingly entangled in her world. She becomes the object of his intense fascination, to the point that he alienates his friends, jeopardizes his job, and loses his career, and starts to lose his love. But then he discovers a secret somebody else has been dying to keep. Hanging his story on this thin spine of psychological mystery, Ferry the author spins a complex yarn of a man whose lifelong struggle against responsibility comes into conflict with his soul yearning to grow up. The boundaries between author and story grow fuzzy, and the novel challenges you to guess how much of what you've just read is really fiction. The metanarrative becomes menacing when he starts to suggest that maybe there's more than a novel here. I have to confess, I don't usually like metafiction. It's usually mere academic puffery from MFA candidates who want you to know what serious artists they are. Not so here. Ferry, whether character or writer, is a knot of conflict that only works itself out through storytelling. The only way he can decipher himself is by telling us his story. And the story he tells brings us into a life grown bizarre behind its revelations. This difficult but rewarding novel probably won't become a breakout hit. The author menaces the audience too much for a mass following, and this story is so book-bound that it will never be made into a movie. But this is the kind of literature that makes me love reading. And it's the kind of book that publishers push out there because they love books. Smart, funny, grim, and surreal, this book will leave you scratching your head in the best possible way.

This is a wonderful book about exploration of people, places, and the self. It leads the reader to places he or she may not have dreamed of when the cover was opened because, like the most memorable of books it makes one think not only about the characters but about oneself. In that way the reader becomes much like one of Ferry's students as he spins the tale of Lisa Kim. After I finished the book I ran across that wonderful Eliot quote from "Four Quartets." "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." It captured the feeling I had when I closed the book about the narrator and, perhaps, most of us. Get this book. It is a great treat.

There's gotta be a reason we seem to lack a crop of young literary lions writing anything really interesting. There's gotta be a reason there seem to be no big novels out these last years, none that are truly good. I don't know what it is, but this book, without intending to, suggests a few possibilities. Mr. Ferry is an old guy and this is his first book and it's a small, almost quiet book, but it's awfully, awfully good, the best novel by an American I have read in quite some time. It's artful, honest and affecting, a rare trifecta, and he pulls it off without showing the least bit of straining.

I loved this book. It's funny, thought-provoking, and like the title says, it's like traveling around the world from your chair. The meat of the story takes place in the Chicago area - it's part-drama, part-mystery/detective and part-love story. I highly recommend it!