A Journey With Elsa Cloud

Rating:
Summary: dreary and overrated
Review: I am glad that I did not actually spend money buying this book (it was given to me). I suspect that the reviewers who wrote the gushful blurbs on the dust cover, Gloria Vanderbilt and Norman Mailer and Lance Morrow, must go to the same glitzy social parties in New York as Ms. Hadley and exchange favors with each other for them to write such panegyrics.

The book is long-winded, overrated, and dreary. I couldn't get through even the first half of the book by this egocentric, gas-bag authoress.

Rating:
Summary: I Can't Imagine The Pain
Review: I can't imagine the pain this mother feels as she attempts yet again to connect with her daughter. There are reviews here that are clearly from Victoria and her friends and they are noted by curse words that are too personal to be from just a reader.
Leila may be married to a publishing heir but Victoria in her scathing personal vendetta fails to mention he had nothing to do with it's publishing.
When you think of Victoria's unsuccessful personal life and extensive drug use and psychosis and then read how she feels her mother is jealous of her, one can feel only pity.
This book made me want to go to India, I could "feel" the country and "taste" the sweets as she has a knack for describing with intense feeling. That's what the reviews should be about, the book,
The struggle to connect with a selfish, long winded, pious daughter is commendable but hopefully Ms. Hadley will accept that some people should be kept at a distance.
She has plenty of readers who see the book for what it was, a book about travel, travel on land and travel through the soul.
Ms. Hadley had the courage to share that journey in her book, a courage not shared by Victoria who prefers to blame her mother for every one of her personal failures.
Kudos to Leila Hadley for surviving Elsa's Clouded Journey.

Rating:
Summary: Only the truth
Review: I have read all previous review comments on this book and while others are entitled to their own often negative opinions of Ms. Hadley and "A Journey with Elsa Cloud," I am half-way through the journey and I want input.

It is true that the book often feels weighty, and sometimes I am bored. But in Ms. Hadley's defense, she's welcome to share her life - in fact is entitled to tell her story as she feels SHE'S lived it, warts and all. I think it's honest and I applaud her for it. She has a keen eye for observing herself, her daughter, and the often tough interactions which take place between them.

Some relationships DO bristle. Mothers and daughters can love each other and STILL mix like oil and water in attitude, personality, lifestyle, and perspective. Leila Hadley seems to own her life's blessings, pain, humor, and, in many ways, lack of fulfillment, her Louie V. luggage gripped firmly in one hand, and her silver spoon lodged securely in the other. I appreciate her descriptions.

Rating:
Summary: I Can't Imagine The Pain
Review: The attention to detail and description in this more-than-a-travel-journal was terrific. I usually don't enjoy long descriptions of places and things, but Hadley has a way of keeping it always interesting. The book easily shifts in time from the (then) present day travels to when her daughter, her traveling companion, was growing up. It's a fresh, honest look at the mother-daughter relationship as well. I recommend it highly, particularly if you are planning a trip to India.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing detail - really made me experience India
Review: The attention to detail and description in this more-than-a-travel-journal was terrific. I usually don't enjoy long descriptions of places and things, but Hadley has a way of keeping it always interesting. The book easily shifts in time from the (then) present day travels to when her daughter, her traveling companion, was growing up. It's a fresh, honest look at the mother-daughter relationship as well. I recommend it highly, particularly if you are planning a trip to India.

Rating:
Summary: a good idead with disappointing result
Review: THe dust jacket of this book promises more that the book gives - I fault the editor more that the writer - This book has wonderful potential - Travel and mother /daugher relationship struggles - but there is not enought meat to sustain the length of the book.. The travel is wonderful and the mother and daughter both grow - but it dragged and got boring -Needs a nip and tuck- I broght it to India to read - and felt it captured some of the magic - but needed more.

Rating:
Summary: An intricate jewel with great heart
Review: This book engrossed me for a variety of reasons. The language is splendid, exhuberant with a sensuous and nearly spiritual ability to evoke the look of things. The writing reminded me of "Beloved" because of its richness and the way memory permeates the present. The story is often painfully honest and will touch anyone who ever had a hard time dealing with a parent. One really feels that this is a human condition, LIFE, presented in such a rich way that our own lives are enriched by the book. This book can be savoured slowly like some of the delicious foods that it describes. A mother's anguish at her sometimes difficult relationship with her daughter leads Ms. Hadley to take stock of her life, and its meaning, of her character, its flaws and its triumphs. I consider this a masterpiece - a touch of Rabelais, a touch of Proust and Toni Morrison and Jung. And yet it is entirely original. Thank you and Brava.

Rating:
Summary: Hell than no fury like a mother scorned!
Review: This book is an affront to the sacred trust between a mother and daughter. Ms.Hadley has no idea of how monstrous her betrayal of her daughter is in the self-serving, whining journey. I am skeptical as to the facts of this book and feel that it should be classified as fantasy/fiction.
I can't imagine what would motivate a person to write such a book about one's child. I have a daughter and I would never in a million years write such an obscene and innapropriate book.
I think Ms.Hadley should take the proceeds from this book and get a better therapist or psychiatrist. Obviously, for all the therapy she supposedly has had and which she brags about in the book, it doesn't seem to have done her a bit of good.
Shame shame shame.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Writing
Review: This is the only book, in my entire life, that I have not been able to finish. It's a chore to read. I've really tried too. I've tried reading it on the flight to India, reading it on the beach, even soaking in the tub. It's pretencious and, in my opinion, without merit. It's unfortunate too because there are always glimmers of promise in the pages.

Rating:
Summary: A study in self-absorption
Review: While Hadley's writing is beautiful, evoking the sights, smells, and sounds of India (and her own life) with intense sensual detail, I found the book quite off-putting. Both Leila and her daughter came across as spoiled and self-absorbed, especially Leila. The story is only about India, travel, and the mother-daughter relationship insofar as those topics relate directly to Leila Hadley's ego--and while you could argue that that's true of any first-person narrative, surely a good writer (one not blinded by her fascination with herself) can hide that tendency somewhat. Hadley's constant harping on her Vuitton bags and other status symbols is so blatant as to be ingeneous and childlike, but also childlike--or childISH--is her complete inability to stop relating everything around her to self, self, self. No wonder others have commented that the inhabitants of India are depicted here in a condescending manner; Hadley seems to have no insight into anyone other than herself. It's a shame to see talent for writing such delicious descriptions all bent on writing about "me". And it's hard to take the spirituality of either daughter or mother seriously when they seem to spend most of their time in India shopping, partying, and sightseeing.
The blurb on the book states that the title comes from the daughter's statement "as a young girl" that she wanted to be "the sea, the jungle, or else a cloud" (and Elsa Cloud thus became a pet name for Veronica). This is fine; kids say all kinds of things like that, and parents often keep trotting out these cute statements. But it turns out that Veronica was SIXTEEN when she said this. That's not cute, whimisical, and childlike, to my mind; it's unbearably affected and pretentious. But that's really my personal taste. I wish Hadley had refrained from publishing this book and just told it all to her therapist instead--but it does have some wonderfully detailed descriptions of Indian festivals and crafts.