Writers tend to come from the same milieu, and travel writers especially share an outlook and a style among themselves that seldom deviates from the “dreamy outsider looking into a foreign land to find himself” model.
While often insightful and enjoyable, one occasionally wishes that a completely different sort of person would apply himself to travel writing and memoir. We have the pandemic to thank for Tom Drove, a completely different sort of writer, whose memoirs come like a breath of fresh air.
Tom was born in a refugee camp, and his book projects a perpetual sense of uprootedness, tempered by his extremely earthy, matter of fact style.
His memoirs read like a baby boomer’s picaresque, a strange blend of the spiritual and carnal, with great stories and lots of good laughs, reading less like Bruce Chatwin and more like one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims transported through time and made to wander through Africa and Latin America.
Born in Austria, transported at an early age to Venezuela, educated in Trinidad and Jamaica, his family moves to South Africa when he is still a child, providing the reader with a perceptive glimpse of places and situations that rarely make the shortlist of travel writing subjects, from Jamaican and South African private boarding schools to mandatory military service in the South African army.
An Atlantic crossing on a 32 ft. yacht from Cape Town to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, full of incident and a memorable stop in Saint Helena Island, where he learns the meaning of “Business On” from the local ladies; traveling and adventures in most South American countries for an entire year.
Followed by intensive partying, samba and a first unbridled splurge of absolute freedom and independence in Brazil, for two years, and a difficult adjustment to a completely different culture in Bolivia in the days of near perpetual coups and revolutions, for five years.
Moving to Chile in the early 80s, Tom becomes the proprietor of a successful English pub and narrates with his characteristic good humor, all that being a publican entails, putting the final quasi-mediaeval touch to his exceptionally entertaining memoir.
Today, self-published writers have a lot of difficulty finding their audience. It is my hope that many, many more people will read this book.
Young men especially would benefit from learning that the world used to be a far more adventurous and interesting place, and with the right attitude, can be made so again.
