This is the most elegant account I have read (and, believe me, I have read many) of time spent by a Brit in Italy. While Cusk provides a mediation on Italian culture (especially art), this is really a story about how we oftentimes need to remove ourselves from the demands of daily life to find what is truly important, to make a change, to feel, or to find a different life. Cusk isn't running away from herself, per se, but trying to overcome the disease she feels living the traditional sub/urban family life in Bristol. Moving to another country permanently doesn't allow for this shift to take place; the tediousness of daily life creeps in. Instead, Cusk advocates a set term of time as a traveller.

In speaking of of one of her daughters:
"She stands on the brink, in an agony of indecision. She is a daredevil; she cannot bear to feel afraid, and so she is inexorably drawn to do the things she fears the most. I admire her for this trait, which I conspicuously lack, but I have failed to understand its significance, which is that she experiences more than the common portion of terror, not less. She is more frightened than Ophelia of jumping into the water, and for this reason she will force herself to do it. which Ophelia sits calmly on her rock."