Rating: 
Summary: Boring, Arrogant, Patronizing. - Blech!
Review: I picked up this book in preparation for my upcoming travels and have been disappointed. It somehow manages to make Chile sound as alluring as a mid west strip mall. Don't waste your time and money.
Rating: 
Summary: Many interesting insights but does give one a feel for Chile
Review: I wanted to like this book and I routinely give all travel books a wide berth but I found this one disappointing. Maybe it was a personality conflict with the author. That being said, I found the book quite self-indulgent. The author seemed as interested in writing about her self and her parade of gentlemen friends -- many not Chilean -- than giving us a feel for the country and its people. A great deal about human interactions that seem typical of travel anywhere. Not enough about what is uniquely Chilean. Even then introspective parts seemed superficial. The trip on Antartica was interesting and she does weave in a fair amount of historical information.
Rating:
Summary: A tale without heart
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. My hopes were high for being introduced to a country I had always wondered about. Chile always seemed like such an oddity to me. But after about 50 pages, it became apparent that the author's narrative dealt more with the logistics of getting from place to place than it did with the people she met and how they affected her. She reports everything with a matter-of-fact, linear style that becomes tedious and never really helps the reader put a finger on the pulse of this country or its people. The characters who loom largest are fellow travelers, like herself, who are not even natives.Her account is also unevenly populated with mini-history lessons. Although it is obvious these are intended to lend perspective to her story, these passages frequently read like a college textbook. I lost patience and got bored. One of the very few books I have actually put down before finishing. I also bought her book on Antartica at the same time; I hope that one is better.
Rating: 
Summary: an interesting travel book
Review: I'm an exchange student living in Chile, and a fellow exchange gave me the book to read (simply because it was the only book she had in English). I read it in 2 days, parts of it i simply skipped because they bored me so much, but other parts made me want to do the exact same thing, although she had quite a few advantages (connections, a press card). A good book, but hard reading in some parts, and i found that it didn't always give me a true picture of what i have found Chile to be.
Rating: 
Summary: eloquent, wise, absorbing--and tough
Review: Like Family is a beautifully written story of a childhood shorn of the protections and comforts that family ought to offer. McLain's finely rendered prose captures her experience vividly and paints rather than explains the hard, fragmented life she and her sisters were forced to lead in the California foster care system after her father left them and then her mother went to the movies and never came back. It reminds us how the idiotic passions and tragic weaknesses of adults can cause a train wreck of a childhood--and how a brilliant young girl with a sense of humor and a resiliant spirit can nonetheless survive, hold onto her sisters, and write a magnificent book. I read it without stopping, gobbling it down like stolen chocolate cake, and then turned around and read the whole book again,just for the joy of the language. Even though it is a hard-edged story, and sometimes I even wept a little, McLain is really very funny, too. And the soundtrack for the movie is going to be great. This book is destined to be a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Carverian childhood
Review: Mclain grew up in Raymond Carver's America, but she writes more like Tess Gallagher. A touching, brutally honest memoir.
Rating: 
Summary: A good mix of travel and history
Review: Mrs Wheeler takes you to places most tourists can only dream about. Mixed with some political history, this book gives you the real Chile. Read her book about Antarctica aswell!
Rating:
Summary: Fun and Fast
Review: O.K. Let's all loosen up. Travel writing is supposed to be fun and it's not just about the place traveled to. It's about the people doing the traveling and the place they came from. I read Sara's book while traveling in Chile last month. All of her observations were right on the mark. She didn't go to Easter Island (I did) so I consider that a significant omission. Otherwise, this is a fun and fast book well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Moving, compelling, happy and sad.
Review: Paula McLain has a way with words. And a way with sentences, paragraphs, ideas and pictures. She tells the story of her and her sisters' foster childhood with fantastic descriptions, but at the same time there is a surprising matter-of-factness that parallels what, sadly enough, a child feels as she lives through these kinds of experiences. A lovely, touching book.
Rating:
Summary: Reactionarism
Review: Read "The Long Valley" by John Steinbeck first.
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