In France, Mattie feels 20 again. In Poland, Magda revisits her
impoverished family. In Uzbekistan, Diana lets a fellow tourist kiss
her. In Germany, Lynn loses her luggage on the Düsseldorf train. The
Hopeful Traveller is a collection of short stories about--and told
by--single women who have put the past behind them but are still looking
for their anchor in the present. It includes bitter-sweet accounts of
the freedoms of postwar life, of foreign travel, of the rekindling of
old friendships and of the search for new ones. The stories speak of
cosmopolitan, self-confident, well-heeled characters, in an era just
before the birth of feminism, conventional in their expectations of men,
always just a step away from displacement and alienation. Set variously
in Paris, Kalisz, Samarkand, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Erfurt, Singapore and
London, these stories, from a much-admired veteran writer, offer a
teasing mix of realism and fantasy, wish-fulfilment and regret. Some of
these stories have appeared in translation in overseas annuals and
collections.
