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Rating: 
Summary: The Myth of Shangri-La Uncovered
Review: Tibet occupies a unique place in the Western mind. It is seen as both a place of wisdom and spirituality and as a war-torn land with a culture in crisis of becoming extinct. In this novel, Charlotte Painter recounts her 1989 voyage to Tibet to meet with a native woman with alleged magical powers. Painter discovers that Tibet is a land with no easy answers, where nothing is as straight-forward as it seems. Intermingled with Painter's travel diary is a fictional story entitled 'The Golden Road,' where Painter puts all of the hardship and struggle she sees into fictional terms. She acknowledges that there are problems in Tibet which she cannot address, and therefore uses her fictional characters to enact change. One cannot find fault in Painter's willingness to show the dark side of Tibet, but there are still definite problems in her book. The fiction sections especially can seem very contrived at times, and too idealistic in comparison with the hardships facing the Tibetans of today. Also, the characters are flat, and due to their secondary nature within the book, there is no motivation to care about them. Tibet is the main character of the novel, and although Painter does a fair job of 'conjuring' it, I finished the novel wishing she had included more about how Tibetans view their own country.
Rating:
Summary: The Myth of Shangri-La Uncovered
Review: Tibet occupies a unique place in the Western mind. It is seen as both a place of wisdom and spirituality and as a war-torn land with a culture in crisis of becoming extinct. In this novel, Charlotte Painter recounts her 1989 voyage to Tibet to meet with a native woman with alleged magical powers. Painter discovers that Tibet is a land with no easy answers, where nothing is as straight-forward as it seems. Intermingled with Painter's travel diary is a fictional story entitled 'The Golden Road,' where Painter puts all of the hardship and struggle she sees into fictional terms. She acknowledges that there are problems in Tibet which she cannot address, and therefore uses her fictional characters to enact change. One cannot find fault in Painter's willingness to show the dark side of Tibet, but there are still definite problems in her book. The fiction sections especially can seem very contrived at times, and too idealistic in comparison with the hardships facing the Tibetans of today. Also, the characters are flat, and due to their secondary nature within the book, there is no motivation to care about them. Tibet is the main character of the novel, and although Painter does a fair job of 'conjuring' it, I finished the novel wishing she had included more about how Tibetans view their own country.
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