All Over the Map

All Over the Map

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51  ·  rating details  ·  566 ratings  ·  129 reviews
What's a wise, witty travel writer to do when she reaches forty and is still single? Wander the globe searching for romance and adventure, of course.

On a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, to celebrate her fortieth birthday, Laura Fraser confronts the unique trajectory of her life. Divorced and childless in her thirties, she found solace in the wanderlust that had always directed he...more
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published June 1st 2010 by Crown
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Eden
I hate that I'm about to compare this book to Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" (and suspect that the author will quickly get sick of that comparison, too) but women (because they are, all) who love "Eat, Pray, Love" will enjoy Fraser's new book, "All Over the Map". Both are stories about unconventional women in their forties who are forced to reconcile the life they've led with the life that's seemingly passed them by. But unlike the rest of us, they get to reconcile whilst moving from one dreamy int...more
Megan
Well-written, but hard to identify with our author. She chronicles her 40s and contemplates her lack of a firm relationship and home while still indulging her penchant for wanderlust. She ultimately self-diagnoses pretty well and never gives up trying to improve, which are both admirable and nice to see in the book. She's also likable enough and definitely travels to interesting places, writing some fascinating stories. However, it is a little silly to me that a woman would be practically 50 bef...more
Peggy
I am torn between 3 and 4 stars. The beginning chapters have the author recounting all the men she has been with and lamenting turning 40 with no husband, children, or white picket fence.
Her problems echo those of Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love and indeed Gilbert provides a blurb on the front cover.
Fraser is a travel writer and she has written about locales around the world; she leaves on trips as easily and frequently as most women go to lunch. She wonders if always doing (often impulsive...more
Lynne Spreen
Laura Fraser lived like a traveling minstrel, able to pull up stakes and go just about anywhere in the world her vagabond heart desires, and earn a living writing about it. Sounds like a dream to me, but at middle-age she becomes depressed over the failure to connect with a life-love and start a family. Then while traveling, she suffers a horrific assault that impacts her ability to continue traveling and writing.

I've never understood how a person could live like it isn't serious. I sort of env...more
Nicky
This was an interesting look at a freelance writer's life as she moves beyond 40. The way she weaves some of the experiences she has while investigating stories into reflections that help her move her own life forward is very true to life. I liked her willingness to be open to possibilities and her conviction that we are all able to continue to grow learn change mature.
I did however feel that the author tried to keep the reader at a distance, by often using sort of a story within a story format....more
Victoria Costello
Laura Fraser is a twice-published memoir writer and a memoir teacher, with whom I've had the pleasure of learning my craft. In her workshop, Laura encouraged us to take big risks, letting it all hang out in order to tell our unique stories. Teaching by example, Fraser did that and more in her newest memoir All Over the Map, now out in paperback. It's the sequel to her bestselling An Italian Affair.

Fraser's two memoirs chronicle her ten-year relationship with a married Frenchman whom she meets in...more
Kathy Austin
Jul 09, 2010 Kathy Austin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone
Laura Fraser's All Over The Map is a funny, witty, sometimes sad but honest review of her life and times. It could be a story about MY life, well, except for the world travel,college and the adventurous Mom! But her trials and tribulations with men and relationships struck a chord with me. Been there, done that. Her insight into the relationships, the whys and wherefores of them, is deeply introspective, completely personal, yet makes you feel you're on the journey with her. Her fears, insecurit...more
Denise
The relatively new genre of memoir of middle aged woman finding herself (usually after divorce) seems almost a second coming of age. These are women disillusioned by the whole struggle of balancing careers, families, and personal growth, looking to lead fuller, more meaningful lives, and always to find their one true love. Laura Fraser fits easily in this category and All Over the Map is the story of her second coming of age.

Laura Fraser is a restless traveler with no roots, running away from th...more
Carol
Jul 13, 2010 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: 2010
I enjoyed reading All Over the Map. It is written in the first person and is an autobiographical telling of a woman’s life after her divorce. She had a dream of finding a good man to marry, children, a house and a career that lets her travel. She already had the wonderful career but it didn’t seem like enough. She desperately wanted a man to have all attributes on her list. She felt that time was running out that the children she wanted so much may never be born. At the beginning of the book, I...more
Christine
The memoir of an approaching-middle-age freelance writer who goes back and forth between loving her itinerant lifestyle and longing for the husband, child and permanent home she never had. This book is between three and four stars for me - I liked the beginning well enough, but really liked the story of her life after she turned 45 (halfway through the book) and found a way to be happy without an Eat, Pray, Love meet-hot-Brazilian-man kind of ending.

At first, part of me felt that the polarizati...more
Irene
I had to let this one marinate for a bit before writing a review. I want to keep this short. Let's see if I can.

I understand why people have compared this book to EPL. It's not much of a stretch: lonely and divorced women of a certain age seeking something in the world, be it love, sex, excitement, inner peace, her spiritual core, or all of the above. I get it. There are some days I panic about waking up one morning and realizing I've missed my opportunity for fulfillment. Hell, that happened l...more
Franchesca Guerrero
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Julie
I hate that this work as well as the prequel, An Italian Affair, are often compared to Gilbert's Eat,Pray, Love. Don't get me wrong, both are endearing tales of a woman's spiritual and emotional growth and enlightenment through journey and experience. However, what I admire about Fraser is her ability to marry the description of her innermost thoughts with her external travels and experiences. Her travel experiences and writing are richly described, peppered with colorful anecdotes and conversat...more
Sheila
Loved this. A great memoir of a woman in her forties navigating her single life and exotic travels. She wrote another great memoir "An Italian Affair" about a romance she had in Italy post-divorce in her 30s. She is like the Eat, Pray, Love writer, only less cheesy and more relatable in my opinion.
Kate
This is more or less a sequel to an earlier book of Laura Fraser's, An Italian Affair. Approaching her 40th birthday at the beginning of the book, Laura (and she's that kind of writer, to me - I feel I could call her by her first name and be a friend if we met) reaches a new stage with her long term relationship with "The Professor" and has come to want a committed, full time partnership in her life. This book explores the bittersweet quest to find a lasting love while reaching for new, meaningf...more
Sarah
This is what Eat, Pray, Love should have been, but missed by a long shot. Put simply, it is one women’s journey through coming to terms with her nomadic life and the consequences it has reaped both good and bad. But as EPL proves, in the wrong hands a story of one’s midlife crisis can easily come across as sappy and forced. Whereas EPL felt like Gilbert decided to set out on a self created mission and therefore had to overwhelm the reader with over the top metaphysical, touchy feely writing, All...more
Kristen
Some will say this is another fortysomething divorcee memoir, and others will criticize Fraser for repurposing her killed journalistic pieces. To them I say, get over it. Anyone who makes a decent living by seeing the world and writing about it deserves a heaping pile of credit. Fraser also happens to be a good, clear writer who is straightforward about her weaknesses and her relative privilege. I could relate to her instincts for both independence and stability, and to her confusion about what...more
Patti Pokorchak
She really is all over the map and reminds me of myself as my nickname is Gypsy and I travelled for 10 years in Europe (though I've had better luck with men). She's a very open and honest writer, letting us get inside her mind, complete with all the insecurities and thoughts that we normally would not have access to. When I read about her building her own little house in San Miguel, I immediately wanted to go there as it sounds like a little piece of paradise with great supportive people. You go...more
Annette
Sad to say, but I found this book immensely depressing. It followed the theme of wildly popular, "Eat,Pray,Love." Laura's tale paralleled Elizabeth's and both, through travel and writing, found balance. Though the overall tone of this book brought my mood down, I appreciated the glimpse that Laura gave of us of her life and challenges. Particularly, as a woman, I felt that her honesty about her age, position in her life and society was captured and expressed with grace and endearment towards any...more
Mrs. Lapacka
I enjoyed this book. I read it while on vacation, which is a good time for it, and I am about the same age as Laura is when the book begins, dealing with many of her same issues. There are moments where the story bogs down here and there, but there were also many passages that I wanted to underline and keep handy to reread when I needed their reminders about life and relationships. Both of Fraser's books have made me want to chuck several sets of clothes in a backpack and head of to far-off plac...more
MaryEllen
The book gets better if you stick with it. The last 1/3 of the book, when Laura learns meditation and stops obsessing over men finally feels like a grown up read. When she finds contentment and puts down some roots in St. Miguel in Mexico, there is finally a serenity in her life. The first 2/3rds of the book are a whine of extended adolescence that almost caused me not to finish it. I'm glad I did. Spirituality is sorely lacking in the memoir and only begins to seep in toward the latter chapters...more
Stacy
I was able to identify with the author, who was in her early to mid forties when she wrote this book, in regards to life not quite turning out the way we expect it to and thinking we would be in different places by this time in our lives. She is pulled between a strong sense of wanderlust and wanting to settle down and have someone permanent in her life. Eventually she comes to reallize "that intention has a lot to do with how things turn out, and accomplishments don't always have to involve suc...more
Lisa
I impulsively bought this book because it was about a travel writer and her travels. I thought it would give me some wonderful descriptions of the places she traveled and thought it might be inspirational in terms of choosing places to travel when I win the lottery one day. hahaha Anyway, it was more about her path to enlightenment about her place in life. Not too exciting. She did describe the places she traveled but it was always in the context of her emotional path in life. So, all in all two...more
Heather
What makes this book different from other single woman travels to a foreign land type books (Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun etc) is that the author doesn't look at foreign countries/people as places that will save her. She appreciates them for their differences-language, food, people, traditions-but doesn't rely on them to fix her problems or make her a better person. Her experiences overseas seemed more real to me than those of the women in the other books-good things definitely happe...more
Keisha
An enjoyable and inspiring read. Much more inspiring than that godawful "Eat, Pray, Love". The author, while whimsical and at times self-righteously stubborn, is much more mature, more sensibly intellectual and keenly aware of her inherent privilege as an Ivy league-educated, white & blonde American female, than that other author.

Some lines from the book that resonated with me:
(view spoiler)[
"You can't go on buying plane tickets forever, treating your life at home as if it's dead time betwe
...more
Carly Thompson
All Over the Map is a memoir about travel, food, and relationships. The book begins with a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico where the narrator is meeting her French lover, the professor (their relationship was chronicled in her previous memoir An Italian Affair). The Professor tells Laura that he is in love with another woman and in a relationship with her. The rest of the book chronicles the various places around the globe Laura visits (she is a journalist and writes travel pieces for women's magazines)...more
Bookventures Book Club
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Heather


LA BELLA VITA CONTINUA...with Laura's latest fabulous adventure "All Over the Map"!

Laura's first memoir, "An Italian Affair", left me longing for MORE.
More travel, more romance & more comic, heart wrenching, honest tales of a girl finding herself as she moves around the globe in search of love & living life to the max.
"All Over the Map" delivers that & so much MORE!

If you are searching for a summer read that combines witty tales ranging from cleansing your life starting with the clos...more
Angela
A wonderful tale about coming to terms with the choices we make along the way and living life to its fullest. Fraser may have traveled the whole world living her dream career as a travel writer, but she longs for the quiet stability of a family life in a place she can call home. Throughout her journey, she learns to view her life in a different light and appreciate the richness of the fruits of her decisions.

As a fellow woman writer approaching midlife, I know from experience I cannot have it a...more
Stephanie
This is definitely along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love, and I think a lot of women will relate to the story. I found some parts of it to be too whiny, and other parts were overly descriptive and full of clichés. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the sections of the book that focused on the author's interactions with her community of single, artistic and/or entrepreneurial middle-aged+ women -- their stories felt genuine and engaging, and made the book more memorable than it might have been othe...more
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“I am realizing that intention has a lot to do with how things turn out, and accomplishments don't always have to involve such a difficult personal fight or campaign. So, too, how you tell your story has a great deal to do with how you feel about the circumstances in your life and which direction your story is going to go in.” 4 people liked it
“All those stories need different endings——which is possible because it's my life and I do have the privelege of being able to write the story.” 2 people liked it
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