Femme d'Adventure: Tales from a Wild Life

by Jessica Maxwell

A wryly told, delightful melange of footloose chronicles by a sometimes anxious wanderer. Maxwell (I Don't Know Why I Swallowed the Fly, 1997) is rather like the rest of us: wary of small planes and rushing rivers, yet also fond of wildlife. Unlike some of us, however, she gamely runs Idaho's Salmon River, takes a 37-hour train ride across the Gobi Desert (insidious grit stormed the failing shell of that old railroad mollusk'), and snorkels among whales. Fly-fishing is Maxwell's raison d'ˆtre, and readers will happily follow her as she searches for steelhead trout on a wild and secret Washington river and fishes a Mongolian waterway reputedly containing the heftiest salmon on earth (up to 200 pounds apiece). One need not be a fellow traveler to appreciate her jaunts; Maxwell's prose is wittily light-hearted. Repulsed by said Mongolian salmon, she declares, I'd be damned if I was going to set a world record with a fish that looked so much like Quasimodo in a mermaid suit.' During an uncharacteristically urban trip to Italy, she comments, If the Italian Renaissance painters had been dentists, their dentures would have looked like Venice. Arcaded and cupolaed, welded together with fancy bridgework, riddled with elegant root canals, its yellowed buildings rising straight out of the sea, it looks, for all the world, like a floating grin.' On her stubbornly eclectic route, Maxwell also journeys to Alaska with sled-dog champion Susan Butcher and her Alaskan huskies. She visits a huge colony of monarch butterflies; she encounters a giant toxic toad. And amid all the double entendres and sardonic asides, this outdoorswoman remains an informative naturalist.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 1997

Reviews

[Danae · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5*

This is one i picked up at the library either for free or for 10 cents. I didn't end up liking it very much. A couple of the chapters were relatively interesting, but almost half of it was about fishing, which bores me. I didn't like her writing either. I think she tries too hard with her comparisons and at times they didn't make sense to me. I think she tried too hard to be funny as well. There are some really bad puns in this book.

Also, the title itself annoys me because it's "Frenglish".

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A zany but cute run through a wide variety of adventure narratives. I found it moving at times, but also annoying at times (particularly when the author was being self-deprecating or ditzy). At its best, I was mesmerized by the locations, the events, and the pace.

[Cat. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and funny, although I still don't understand what's so great about fishing. She almost seems to do all these travels as a big dare, but it is fun and refreshing to read about a woman doing all of this, including whitewater rafting, going on a fishing trip to Mongolia, etc.

[Mom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Travel narrative with self contained chapters, some better than others. Good for a gloomy winter day which was when I read most of it.

[Skye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and very diverse short stories about a variety of things.