Gough - Kiss the Sunset Pig

Praise for Kite Strings of the Southern Cross

Finalist for the Thomas Cook/Daily

Telegraph Travel Book Award 2000

Winner of Foreword magazines Silver

Medal for Travel Book of the Year

Anyone who can persuade a Fijian island community to wear leaves in their sandals for good luck is a poet of the road

Justine Hardy, author of Scoop-Wallah

The best travel book Ive read in years. Its the kind of book you want every traveller you know to read

Brad Newsham, author

Gough records everything she sees with a subtle wit, a lyrical turn of phrase, and a remarkably open mind Her writing is vigorous, sensual and visual She sweeps the reader into her world

Globe and Mail (Canada)

Outer and inner landscape and the poetry of her convictions conspire to create a narrative that is rich and emotional. Whether she is describing the way the angelic translucent bodies of the jellyfish form a gently swaying cathedral near the seas surface, or the morning ritual of the Giant Aunts in which each woman floats her gorgeous body adrift Gough is present, vulnerable and delightful

San Francisco Examiner

lovely, lyrical a bittersweet tale, heartfelt and well told Though she has encountered unhappiness, bewilderment and even terror on the road, her voice is fresh and still full of wonder at what the world still holds

Trips Magazine

an amiable and engaging storyteller, who knows how to bring characters, dialogues and situations to compelling life Reading this book is like travelling all over again

Don George, Salon.com, editor of Wanderlust

A great page-turner The image of the Great Aunts floating like starfish on the water is one I shall never forget Her seemingly effortless writing will no doubt make her a new star in the Southern Cross

New Zealand Herald

an arresting account of an individuals odyssey over a ten-year span in which time she explores her own growth as a human being, and how travelling has helped to nourish that growth. One also suspects, however, that Laurie, even without the travels, would still have her say, beautifully and with a gifted poets vision Her tone of understated charm, humour, honesty, courage, and resiliencycombine to create tales that readers from any walk of life can relate to simply as human beings refreshingly renews ones wonder of the world and broadens ones appreciation for it

The Toronto Star

Colourful and inspiring This feisty, sexy, energetic tale offers the best of memoir and travel narrative combined. Gough chronicles her encounters with both humour and wisdom

Amazon.com

A terrific yarn. Highly recommended

Choice

Skip this review, head straight to the bookstore, and buy Kite Strings of the Southern Cross

Spa Magazine (U.S.)

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Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2006. Simultaneously published in the U.K. by Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 46 West Street, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1RP.

(WEB) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Laurie Gough, 2006

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

THE AMERICAN WEST AS LIVING SPACE, by Wallace Stegner

University of Michigan Press. Extract reprinted by permission.

LIKE LIFE, by Lorrie Moore Random House. Extact reprinted by permission.

The passage from Moritz Thomsens unpublished memoirs originally appeared in Salon.com.

Extract reprinted by permission.

CALIFORNIA by Joni Mitchell Alfred Publishing. Extract reprinted by permission.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Gough, Laurie, 1964

Kiss the sunset pig : an American road trip (with exotic detours) / Laurie Gough.

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305615-7

ISBN-10: 0-14-305615-8

1. Gough, Laurie, 1964 TravelUnited States. 2. United StatesDescription and travel. I. Title. E169.Z83G69 2006 917.304'931 C2006-900917-1

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data available

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To Joe Fisher,

wherever you are

It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west

Wallace Stegner, The American West as Living Space

And the climb upward out of the cave into the upper world is the ascent of the mind into the domain of true knowledge

Plato

Sometimes she thought she was just trying to have fun in life, and other times she realised she must be terribly confused

Lorrie Moore, Like Life

Each day at the hour of the highest tide a large white sow would appear at the end of the street in Palestina. With calm, slow dignity, threading her way between the chunks of balsa and the trunks of trees that had been torn away and flung up on the beach by the winter storms, she would stand finally for a moment where the last waves spilled around her feet; then, head held high, staring intently toward the north and oceanic curve of the horizon, she would move out into the water and stand there in profound meditation up to her shoulders in the sea while the breakers crashed over her head. Something deep and awful drove her into the sea; something deep and awful, poetic and unpiggish drew her daily to contemplate the vastness and mystery of the Pacific. Her eyes were drawn to the northern edges of the earth at the limits of her vision as though, the first pig in the history of the world, she were realising the roundness of this globe upon which she was imprisoned. Almost immediately I identified myself with that old white sow, envied her that dignity and that impulse toward transfiguration that drove her into the breakers. I could only give her my own qualities; we were both strangers on a savage coast, both of us burned with longings, an awareness of mortality, a sense of having arrived at that point when we would harvest our own destinies.

From Moritz Thomsens unpublished memoirs