Suzanne's Reviews > One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children

If you're planning a trip abroad with children, this book is invaluable for research. But if you enjoy travel literature (such as Paul Theroux), this book will fall short.

Originally written as a series of emails, the book contains breezy updates from the father of a family who decided to sell their house and travel around the world for a year. While the author (an editor of photography coffee table books) is funny, he is not a shrewd observer of people or places -- or if he is, lacks the writing chops to convey them. He also can't help but show off, in a middle-class way, his familiarity with foreign languages and cultures and overall his rather privileged view on life. The emails-slash-chapter lack the development of overall themes, and he rather abruptly at the end summarizes some conclusions in a "what I learned on my summer vacation" sort of way.

That said, I did enjoy reading about how the parents weren't afraid to travel like locals and bring their children on adventures -- the chapters on traveling through Africa were riveting. The author may write like a dilettante, but put his philosophy into practice and it sounds like the whole family benefited from the trip.

On a side note, the author commented on how the strength of his relationship with his wife, but some brief internet research shows that they've since separated. Since the book never plumbs the depths of the author's relationships with anyone, it's difficult to understand how likely that is.