A Stranger's Neighborhood (Emerging Writers in Creative Nonfiction)

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating details, but little depth
Review: Donald Morrill is at best in these essays in observing and cataloging stories and little sketches about the people around him in the various settings of these essays, be they friend, stranger, or fellow foreigner. For these stories, and for the "telling details", this collection is well worth the read. However, the only unifying theme between these episodes seems to be himself: how these people relate to him and illuminate his character, and he just doesn't exhibit the ability to present himself as much as an engrossing character as the people around him. As a result, the writing comes off as uneven, with brillant flashes connected by dull (even stereotypical, in these days of the best-selling memoir) introspection.

Rating:
Summary: A travelogue of physical experience and emotional discovery.
Review: The author's flowing prose style transports the reader on a journey across continents, across time and across the human experience. With epicenters on opposite sides of the globe, we take a fluid, sensory and introspective tour of places, people and forces ranging from childhood experiences in the working class side of Des Moines, Iowa to the isolation of a foreign educator in Changchun, China in the "emerging" early 80's. Throughout the books wonderful "itinerary" we continue to find that the shortest distance between all of its varied points remains the line between our hearts. Upon completion we find that the definition of our common neighborhood must be revised to hold the dissonance of being both utterly more encompassing and unimaginably more intimate than we might once have innocently believed.