REVIEW: Margaret Bensfield Sullivan — Following the Sun (BOOK)
“This is a book about the year my husband and I quit our jobs, gave up our New York City apartment, pulled our two kids (four and six) out of school, and left the country to travel as a family to twenty-nine countries across six continents.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.margaretbensfieldsullivan.com/
Our adventure spanned 2019, the last year anyone would be able to do such a thing before COVID,” writes Margaret Bensfield Sullivan, in her new book titled Following the Sun: Tales (and Fails) from a Year Around the World With Our Kids. “‘A real live case of carpe diem,’ is how a friend described our trip after we returned home. COVID had landed in the U.S. a month after we had, and our friend was one of many people who expressed amazement at our timing. Messages by email, text, and social media poured in as we returned, many with questions about our adjustment to pandemic life, but most revealing a broader curiosity about our trip itself. Whether rooted in bewilderment (why would you do such a thing?) or inspiration (I want to do such a thing!), their questions probed every mile of our experience.”
Sullivan’s ability to blend personal experience with anecdotes on aforementioned carpe diem, and subjective, quality of life Taoist principles is immensely effective. Normally books of this nature, ironically touching on emotionally charged subjects, come across as dry and overly informative. But Sullivan knows how to balance personal and decidedly more clinical tonalities, shining through as a person whilst simultaneously offering something of an emotional roadmap to parenting in uncertain times. “The year away had turned our family into a well-oiled travel machine — seasoned, efficient, clear-eyed — but it hadn’t happened right away,” Sullivan writes. “There had been so much bumbling in the beginning. (And in the middle.)
So many mishaps, mistakes, and misguided assumptions! It wasn’t until the final months of the year that we really figured things out and hit our stride. Once I sat down and replied to all those questions, I could see how far we’d come, and how all the lessons we had learned the hard way — about travel, about the world, about ourselves — just might be interesting for others too. So, I decided to put them in a book. Sometimes I changed names, sometimes I merged experiences for the sake of efficiency. But otherwise, this was our lived experience. It’s the book I wish I’d had, back when I needed straight talk from someone like me, who’s neither a lifestyle expert nor, to be sure, an influencer with millions of followers. Someone who could answer my three biggest questions with complete authority and candor: What will this be like? Can we actually pull it off? Are we making a huge mistake?”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Following-Sun-Tales-Fails-Around/dp/B0CPRTSK42
It’s the last line, ironically Sullivan’s three questions (not to sound pretentious, but making me think however flippantly of Tolstoy’s Three Questions), that really carry the reader through the book. They form the backbone of the book’s ideological crux, essentially the pursuit of self-determining the family unit. The fact Sullivan is able to answer this while simultaneously positing the question showcases considerable craft. It also shows empathy and compassion to those in positions like her, which is commendable to say the least.
Colin Jordan
