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Memory Maps
In her most personal book since The Hacienda, Lisa St Aubin de Teràn charts a life spent in all corners of the world—from Wimbledon to the Venezuelan Andes, from the Caribbean to Ghana—with wanderlust and fate as her guides. Written with vividness and clarity, Memory Maps is an ongoing memoir of a life lived with courage and imagination.
- GenresTravelMemoirNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
5 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Lisa St. Aubin de Terán
64 books61 followersLisa St. Aubin de Terán was born Lisa Rynveld in South London. She attended the James Allen's Girls' School. She married a Venezuelan landowner, Jaime Terán in 1971, at the age of 17, and became a farmer of sugar cane, avocados, pears, and sheep from 1972-1978.
Her second husband was the Scottish poet and novelist George MacBeth. After the marriage failed, she married painter Robbie Duff Scott and moved to Umbria, Italy.
In 1982, St. Aubin de Terán published her first novel, Keepers of the House. This novel was the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award. Her second novel, The Slow Train to Milan, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She received the Eric Gregory for Poetry in 1983. Her work includes novels, memoirs, poetry, and short-story collections.
St. Aubin de Terán has three children, including a daughter by her first husband, Iseult Teran, who is also a novelist.
She currently lives in Amsterdam with her partner Mees Van Deth, where she runs a film company and has set up the Terán Foundation in Mozambique.
Her second husband was the Scottish poet and novelist George MacBeth. After the marriage failed, she married painter Robbie Duff Scott and moved to Umbria, Italy.
In 1982, St. Aubin de Terán published her first novel, Keepers of the House. This novel was the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award. Her second novel, The Slow Train to Milan, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She received the Eric Gregory for Poetry in 1983. Her work includes novels, memoirs, poetry, and short-story collections.
St. Aubin de Terán has three children, including a daughter by her first husband, Iseult Teran, who is also a novelist.
She currently lives in Amsterdam with her partner Mees Van Deth, where she runs a film company and has set up the Terán Foundation in Mozambique.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 26, 2020
I was afraid to approach this book, because Slow Train to Milan was one of my favorites when I was in high school, and I’ve seen too many beloved authors who couldn’t withstand the proof of time. But Lisa’s (I’m going to shorten her name significantly, sorry) writing still has me under its spell. Yes, I can recognize the privilege, the capriciousness, the coyness, and the strange desire to show her own life as the stuff of legends and milk it for all it’s worth, while at the same time not being quite transparent – and yet I loved this and read it in two days.
I would like to know how she was able to buy and renovate houses all around the world, travel all around the world, meet and sometimes wed rich and famous people. She’s one of those writers that come from another world and would normally make me roll my eyes and not bother. But there’s something very honest about this writer’s curiosity of the world, and about the writing itself, that makes me look away when problematic and/or annoying bits appear. She says:
This is a narrative, a mass of relative values learnt. Not least of these is that tears should not be shed on the losses of the wealthy: there are too many others worthier of pity. The reversals of luck of the lucky do not put them in the same bracket as the millions of people who struggle through their lives in genuine need.
I think that Lisa (of this book; I know nothing about the real person) is not only curious, but inherently compassionate and at least trying to be understanding towards any people she comes across in her travels. I was inwardly cringing when she approached Hong Kong and used the word “Oriental” (no, not about people, thankfully) – and then she started moaning not about the impenetrability of the culture, but about the white people who were living there and doing their best not to mingle with the locals and to generally treat them as inferiors. After all, she’d said this about her best friend Otto:
He had spent nearly a third of his life as a political prisoner while I still lived blinkered by the notion that politics was boring.
I loved her descriptions of places – some more than others; she had lived in the Andes and she can write really fascinatingly about them, and about Italy. Bologna is the city I want to visit the most, if I ever could go to Italy, and Lisa writes about Bologna with a lot of love. I remember Bologna from Slow Train so well.
Bologna is one of those Italian cities that has got it all. It has fabulous medieval and Renaissance architecture and it has Roman remains. It has a great cathedral and yet is packed full with other exquisite churches. It has towers, great historic towers. It even has a leaning tower. It has a famous and historic university with an internationally acclaimed medical school. It has lovely piazzas, beautiful streets, fine shops, theaters, gardens, statues – everything, in fact, and yet it does not have the fame the Bolognese feel it deserves. Who talks about the leaning tower of Bologna? But it is there and it leans just as much as Pisa’s.
It is a strange book – I’m not sure whether it is a memoir, or a travelogue, or a collection of essays. Some of the stuff reads as if it was totally made up for the sake of the story (the stay in Sochi), but frankly, who cares. I was overjoyed to meet some of the characters from Slow Train again: Otto, Elias, Cesar (here he appears under his real name, Jaime). It felt like revisiting an old friend who has remained a friend even though you haven’t meet for decades.
There’s quite a lot about writing – Lisa’s personal, always personal, approach to writing. She has great understanding of what magical realism is. It’s not my cup of tea, usually; there are few writers who employ it well. But I have the feeling that Lisa is one of them, and I might read and like a MR book from her… Or maybe she is too knowledgeable to use it at all. (I’m being mean. I love Alejo Carpentier, and he’s the magical realist.)
What can I say? I just like Lisa. Her writing is a wonderful detour from what I usually read.
One thing we really weren’t supposed to do, by mutual consent, was get ourselves killed by any of the drug barons or their armies who ruled from Corumbá to Santa Cruz.…
I would like to know how she was able to buy and renovate houses all around the world, travel all around the world, meet and sometimes wed rich and famous people. She’s one of those writers that come from another world and would normally make me roll my eyes and not bother. But there’s something very honest about this writer’s curiosity of the world, and about the writing itself, that makes me look away when problematic and/or annoying bits appear. She says:
This is a narrative, a mass of relative values learnt. Not least of these is that tears should not be shed on the losses of the wealthy: there are too many others worthier of pity. The reversals of luck of the lucky do not put them in the same bracket as the millions of people who struggle through their lives in genuine need.
I think that Lisa (of this book; I know nothing about the real person) is not only curious, but inherently compassionate and at least trying to be understanding towards any people she comes across in her travels. I was inwardly cringing when she approached Hong Kong and used the word “Oriental” (no, not about people, thankfully) – and then she started moaning not about the impenetrability of the culture, but about the white people who were living there and doing their best not to mingle with the locals and to generally treat them as inferiors. After all, she’d said this about her best friend Otto:
He had spent nearly a third of his life as a political prisoner while I still lived blinkered by the notion that politics was boring.
I loved her descriptions of places – some more than others; she had lived in the Andes and she can write really fascinatingly about them, and about Italy. Bologna is the city I want to visit the most, if I ever could go to Italy, and Lisa writes about Bologna with a lot of love. I remember Bologna from Slow Train so well.
Bologna is one of those Italian cities that has got it all. It has fabulous medieval and Renaissance architecture and it has Roman remains. It has a great cathedral and yet is packed full with other exquisite churches. It has towers, great historic towers. It even has a leaning tower. It has a famous and historic university with an internationally acclaimed medical school. It has lovely piazzas, beautiful streets, fine shops, theaters, gardens, statues – everything, in fact, and yet it does not have the fame the Bolognese feel it deserves. Who talks about the leaning tower of Bologna? But it is there and it leans just as much as Pisa’s.
It is a strange book – I’m not sure whether it is a memoir, or a travelogue, or a collection of essays. Some of the stuff reads as if it was totally made up for the sake of the story (the stay in Sochi), but frankly, who cares. I was overjoyed to meet some of the characters from Slow Train again: Otto, Elias, Cesar (here he appears under his real name, Jaime). It felt like revisiting an old friend who has remained a friend even though you haven’t meet for decades.
There’s quite a lot about writing – Lisa’s personal, always personal, approach to writing. She has great understanding of what magical realism is. It’s not my cup of tea, usually; there are few writers who employ it well. But I have the feeling that Lisa is one of them, and I might read and like a MR book from her… Or maybe she is too knowledgeable to use it at all. (I’m being mean. I love Alejo Carpentier, and he’s the magical realist.)
What can I say? I just like Lisa. Her writing is a wonderful detour from what I usually read.
One thing we really weren’t supposed to do, by mutual consent, was get ourselves killed by any of the drug barons or their armies who ruled from Corumbá to Santa Cruz.…
August 4, 2022
Uneven but overall I loved this collection of travel stories because her writing is divine.
Choice quote: "I find it strangely comforting to think that the earliest form of human life was nomadic, walkabouts – that instinctive urge to take off and roam."
Choice quote: "I find it strangely comforting to think that the earliest form of human life was nomadic, walkabouts – that instinctive urge to take off and roam."
April 14, 2019
I picked this book up purely by chance. I knew nothing about the author so was unsure what to expect. Well...I just couldn't put this book down. If you're a lover of travel to interesting places, then this is the one for you. This took me on an amazing journey with the author. Married at a young age she travelled with her husband and young baby to South America to live at the Hacienda. Then onto some other fabulous places in all corners of the globe.
I don't want to spoil it any more but just the synopsis may interest you at the back of the book..."Lisa charts a life spent on all corners of the world, from Wimbledon to the Andes, Caribbean to Ghana and confesses to wanderlust and fate being her chief guides"
The book was published around 2001 and I've read it a few times. A good one for a bit of armchair travel. I believe Lisa now loves in Africa permanently.
I don't want to spoil it any more but just the synopsis may interest you at the back of the book..."Lisa charts a life spent on all corners of the world, from Wimbledon to the Andes, Caribbean to Ghana and confesses to wanderlust and fate being her chief guides"
The book was published around 2001 and I've read it a few times. A good one for a bit of armchair travel. I believe Lisa now loves in Africa permanently.
March 29, 2020
Great descriptive writing...fascinating about the various places featured.
May 16, 2012
At times I found this author incredibly annoying, but at other times I really liked the book. What I enjoyed the most was her brutally honest of places that the tourist industry tries to convince us are paradise, but are anything but. Venice and the Caribbean island of Nevis can be nightmares. On the other hand, desolate Mali is enticing and completely engaging in her view. Her personal life is bogged down in multiple marriages, law suits, and financial disasters. One wonders how she survives it all, something she doesn't really reveal.
November 11, 2007
I've always enjoyed de Teran's books so it was nice to read this latest memoir and get caught up on her and her family.
April 17, 2009
only funny part was when she describes a young african guy in the hall outside her hotel room in mali trying to "tame" the vacuum.
Want to read
June 8, 2012I LOVE this author. She is in the Pantheon in both narrative voice and subject.
September 19, 2013
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12193086
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12193086
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews