A Short Walk Through a Wide World

 

A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke, 400 pages.

As a child in Paris, Aubry Tourvel was struck with a strange illness. If she stays to long in one place she starts to bleed, then die. The only thing that holds her illness at bay is travel, so she begins to walk. Over the decades her wanderings take her from the greatest cities to the most remote locations. The only thing that is constant is that she can't stay, and she can't come back anyplace she has been before. Over the decades the world starts to change, as she passes from the 19th century to the 20th. Aubry sees countless wonders, but she sees most of them alone, as she longs to share her strange life with someone, and finally find a place to call home. 

I enjoyed this book a lot. It had a lot of really great set pieces, and Westerbeke did a good job building vibrant, interesting characters even if they were only part of the book briefly. The nested, non-linear stories did a really great job conveying the endlessness of Aubry's travels, as well as the vibrancy of her experiences. My biggest complaint was that the book couldn't seem to decide whether the "why" of Aubry's illness mattered, and I think I would have preferred it go entirely unexplained over the half measures taken towards the end (along with a totally unnecessary bootstrap paradox). Despite a couple of hiccups, I think this is really impressive for a debut novel, and did quite enjoy it.