Here’s a Q&A she did with me about All Over the Map:

Q&A with Mary Roach

MR: I loved your new book, Laura. I found it to be really wise. There were some lines that really stayed with me, like, “Whatever happens, in spring there will always be rhubarb.” I also loved, “It’s not that the grass is greener, it’s that you can never be on both sides of the lawn.” Amen.

LF: Thanks, Mary. I’m wiser, I hope, than when we first met in our twenties!

MR: With this book, there’s something about the fact that you’re writing it in “middle age”–there’s a wisdom to it, and your perspectives on yourself, relationships and marriage had a lot of depth. An Italian Affair was a wonderful, sweeping romance, but this one has more depth and lessons for so many people who are in similar situations.

LF: I guess there are a few advantages to being middle-aged. You’re not as much of an idiot.

MR: I was wondering why there was such a big gap in time between An Italian Affair and this book? I mean, I know, book ideas are not easy to come up with, particularly when you’re writing from your own life—and there’s that sense that you have do always be doing something book-worthy.

LF: That’s right. An Italian Affair was successful enough that it was hard to come up with an idea that people in the book world thought would be as successful. I went to see a mentor, William Zinsser, who wrote On Writing Well, who’s an old-school journalist, with an office in New York City that’s like an oasis of craft where agents and publishers dare not enter. When I told him I felt like I couldn’t write anything because I didn’t think anything would be as successful as my last book, he said that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. He told me to just get back to writing about what moves me most.

MR: Good advice.

LF: Absolutely. And the funny thing about this book is that it ended up being quite different from what I set out to write, and I like it better. Everything happens in the process of writing. You can’t plan it all out. The book is a little hodge-podge—“All Over the Map” is kind of the theme as well.

MR: You’re giving your critics a big, fat target. Here’s your headline! Run with it! (Both laugh). But life is all over the map, and maybe because you travel so much, you’re skilled at finding the angle in covering the things you report that fit a larger narrative—you did a really good job of thematically weaving in issues about women and the struggles they have all over the world and the ways they find of dealing with what society expects of them. The book is really not all over the map at all.

LF: I in no way wanted to compare the issues I’m dealing with to those of the women I interviewed—prostitutes in Naples, genocide survivors in Rwanda.

MR: I feel your pain, honey. Just try being me! You can’t believe some of the dates I’ve had on Match.com! You think your Saturday night is rough! (Laughs) No, I don’t think you in any way belittled their experiences, because the stories of those women are very compassionately told.

LF: Good. I just wanted to get across that we’re at a funny time in history when women all over the world are in a double bind about what’s expected of them.

MR: So, did you think about writing this book in the second person like An Italian Affair? I remember you went back and forth when you wrote that, deciding between first person or second.

LF: Or the royal “we.” With this book, it’s part of that sense of being older and wiser–I felt I could land on the first person. I’ve got something to say, I have more confidence about my voice.  With An Italian Affair, the second person worked, partly because it gave it a dreamy quality, like a fable. But this is a different book.

MR: This is such an honest book, I don’t think the “you” would work. You can say about yourself, “You’re the most impulsive person, always blurting things out,” but the reader might take offense at the “you.”

LF: I’m not sure men who read An Italian Affair appreciated the “you,” either. “You’re having an affair with a sexy French professor.” Wait! No I’m not! It just doesn’t work for everyone.

MR: My publisher did an audio book for my last book, Bonk, and they found a male reader. I asked, “What about that chapter where I have sex with Ed in the ultrasound lab?” That’s going to be a little problem, since it’s in the first person. They hired a woman.

LF: That’s hilarious. Since An Italian Affair was about my thirties, and All Over the Map is about my forties, that means there’s less sex in it, sadly. But it’s harder to write about sex in the first person, so it’s just as well.

MR: One of the things I like about this book, in an age where there’s a blurry line between fact and fiction in a lot of memoirs, is that this one is absolutely true. You didn’t exaggerate anything, or change things around to make them fit. It’s a really real story about coming to grips with who you are, and what you thought you’d be.

LF: I guess the journalist in me believes that memoirs should be true. I mean, dialogue is never word for word, and memory is always faulty—memoir is about the truth to the best of your ability to remember it– but I don’t believe in embellishing anything. If you want to do that, just call it “fiction.”

MR: I was especially touched by your portrait of your mom, and just a generation back, how hard it was for her to balance an adventurous spirit with family life and pretty rigid social expectations of women. I liked your exploration of whether women can have it all. When you talked to women at your reunion who seemed to have great jobs and family lives, you scratched the surface and saw a lot of stress, and they envied your life. Like you said, it’s not that the grass is always greener, it’s that you can’t be on both sides of the lawn.

LF: The whole dating thing in your forties is brutal. Thank God you vetted a lot of my Internet dating matches over the years, or I would’ve gotten into bigger trouble. Or maybe I would’ve had more to write about. But you had an unerring sense with the “delete” button.

MR: Yeah, I remember the guy who took you to Muslim Malaysia where Americans weren’t very welcome, in the middle of monsoon season.

LF: No cocktails on the beach.

MR: You didn’t run him by me!

LF: My mistake. Older and wiser.

MR: Let’s go have a cocktail.

VIP Survey: Laura Fraser

Author Laura Fraser (photo by Cristina Taccone)

What’s your favorite hotel (and why)?
The Hotel Alto Atacama in the Atacama Desert in Chile. It’s a low-key, elegant, environmentally-friendly lodge with all-inclusive meals, wine, and wonderful outdoor excursions in the incredible desert and volcano surrounds. The adobe architecture melds into the landscape, and it’s peaceful and cool in the rooms. At night, you can climb a hill and use a telescope to see all the stars in the southern hemisphere.

What’s your favorite restaurant (and why)?
La Ciccia, in San Francisco. The owners, Lorella and Massimo, serve authentic Sardinian cuisine in a cozy neighborhood restaurant. It’s amazing food with no pretensions; when I go there, I always feel like family.

Can you tell us about a “hidden gem”– like a non-touristy, neighborhood restaurant– you’ve found in your travels?
There’s a little restaurant on the island of Filicudi in the Aeolian archipelago north of mainland Sicily called Villa la Rosa that serves the best pasta sarde anywhere. The dish tastes like the fresh sea breezes all around.

What’s the best travel advice you’ve ever received from a friend?
Learn to speak Italian fluently.

Please tell us about your best and worst travel experiences.
My best travel experiences are always the simplest ones–a fresh meal on a terrace with a sunset, a swim. Somehow, these experiences almost always happen in Italy. My worst experience was being assaulted, once in Egypt, and once in Samoa. It’s good to travel with a friend.

If a traveler had only one day to spend in your hometown, what are the top five things they should make sure to see or do?
San Francisco is such a wonderful town. I would tell people:
- Take a walk in Golden Gate Park in the arboretum.
- Go to the Farmer’s Market in the Ferry Building.
- Wander around Valencia Street in the Mission to take in the funky boutiques, then eat a pizza atDelfina or have a pastry at Tartine.
- Take a bicycle ride in the Presidio, over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, then eat at the Presidio Social Club.
- Wander the streets of Chinatown and North Beach and go in to City Lights Booksellers.

Where do you want to go on your next vacation?
India.

Laura Fraser is the author of All Over the Map (Harmony Books), the follow-up to her New York Times bestseller, An Italian Affair.

The Atacama is surrounded by mountain ranges, which stop the humidity from entering the area. These are impressive peaks, with the tallest, Volcan Licancabur, towering at 5,916 meters–19,400 feet. We hoped to climb some volcanoes, but it’s winter in Chile, and it gets to about 40 below on the volcanoes. But there was plenty to do lower down.

We stayed at a lodge called the Alto Atacama,which is among my favorite places to stay in the world. It fits right in to the landscape with its adobe walls and a design that tucks right in to the canyon wall. The rooms are simple, elegant, and cool in the desert heat. There was an incredible peacefulness and silence in the evenings, and the brightest stars I’ve ever seen (they even have a telescope on top of a nearby hill). The meals were fresh with Chilean accents,  and local ingredients–like the home-made ice cream from the arroba tree, which you can’t taste anywhere else in the world. Best was the staff of guides, who were prepared to take us just about anywhere we desired in the region, which was just about everywhere.

Our first day, we took a hike to the Valle de La Luna, or Valley of the moon, which is in the Cordillera de la Sal, or Salt Mountains. This was the area that most resembled Canyonlands, with hoodoo rocks and rippling red canyon walls. Huge sand dunes spread across the horizon.

The next day, we hiked down a cactus canyon–Los Cardones Gorge; the area is so dry that the cacti grow about 6 centimeters per year, and most were well over 300 years old. In the afternoon, after a long lunch, we drove out to a salt flat, where we saw the several species of flamingoes that feed in the pools on the salt flats. The surface of the salt flat is crusted with crystals; with the volcanoes in the background, it was a spectacular sunset.

Our favorite day was taking a hike down the  valley of the Machuca River. We started at a small town called Machuca, where our guide, Joel, grew up, and his aunts now live, selling handicrafts to tourists on their way up to the geysers, and raising llamas. It’s over 12,000 feet, and all the houses are made of stone, each with a small solar panel that can produce electricity for lights and a small radio. We hiked down the valley on the route that Joel used to take to school in Rio Grande, a small town 14 kilometers away. His people, native Ataqueños, speak Quechua, from the Incas, and an older language, Kunza.

The route started with high mountain lagoons with frozen grass and a few Andean gulls. We followed the river down through fields of wailla, which is the grass that they make the roofs out of. We saw the plants rica-rica, copa-copa, and pingo-pingo, each with its own medicinal use (the combo is an aphrodisiac). Joel told us that when he grew up here, he saw no other people than his family, and was friends with the animals. As if on cue, a huanaco, the wild animal from which the llama was domesticated, showed up on the trail.

Halfway down the valley we came to a small farm, Peznaliri, with cultivated Andean terraces. Joel grew up in one of these stone houses, and showed us the chalkboard where his dad taught him multiplication tables. Now the water has diminished enough that the family has moved away; there’s not enough water to cultivate vegetables, which he says were plentiful as a child, a result of global warming. The family has been offered a lot to develop the gorgeous valley, but Joel explained to me that the real richness is the land, as is. We walked all day without seeing another soul, and ended up in Rio Grande, which has about 100 people, who raise llamas, sheep, and goats.

Our last day, Joel took us mountain biking in the Salt Mountains near the lodge, which was like cycling in the canyon country near Moab–sandy, with lots of hills ad rocks, though mostly gypsum, not sandstone. In the afternoon, we wandered through San Pedro de Atacama, a backpacker’s town with lots of little restaurants and artisan shops, as well as a North Face store for the serious trekkers. We visited the home of a miller, who showed us how his stone mill worked, fed by a hydraulic paddle underneath; it seemed like another century.

Our last night, we sipped Chilean malbec and were sorry to leave the quiet, the stars, and the daily excursions. There was a lot left we hadn’t seen–more mountain excursions, lagoons on the altoandino, the altiplanic villages…It was so remote, 2 hours by plane from Santiago and then another 2 hours by car to the lodge, that I don’t know if I’ll be back. But I’d love to return.

Most of these photos are by Peter Eckart.

Death with Interruptions*
Jose Saramago

Another one of Saramago’s books where he takes one aspect of reality and shows how people react to it–in this case, death takes a vacation for two weeks. I loved the first half of the book, liked less the part where Death falls in love with a cellist. Strange to be reading it when Saramago died.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog*
Muriel Barbery

Loved the book, felt like the ending undermined the rest of the story.

Where the God of Love Hangs Out
Amy Bloom

Wonderfully emotional, spare writing, but hard to like or care about the perverse characters.

More of  This World or Maybe Another*
Barb Johnson

Memorable characters in pre-Katrina New Orleans, completely satisfying.

Private Life*
Jane Smiley

Sweeping novel with a depressing arc. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is evoked at one point, and Margaret’s life and journey seem almost as confined. But I wondered whether she was too smart a character to live with what she lived with for so long without taking any action on her own behalf.

Desert*
JMG LeClezio

Nobel Prize-winning author’s  tale of two Algerian desert people, a boy many years ago, and a contemporary girl of his tribe, and their struggles to exist against the forces first of colonialism and then globalization. Lovely.

The Night of the Gun*
David Carr

NYT writer investigates his drug-addled past, raising meta-questions about the nature of truth and memoir. Great book as long as he stayed on the theme of overcoming addiction; once safely back in the world, it verges on name-dropping and narcissism. Interviewing the wife and current boss? Not the same as the interviews with the druggies of the past.

The Lovers
Vendela Vida

I admire Vendela’s spare prose and stark emotional landscapes, and really loved Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. This book, though, left me a bit cold.

Little Bee*
Chris Cleave

Thoughtful look at clash of cultures and refugees from a brutal problem the UK doesn’t want to recognize. Hard to like one of the protagonists, especially when the other was so wonderful. Bang-up ending with too many easy coincidences.

A Visit from the Goon Squad*
Jennifer Egan

Mish-mash of  story relating to rock and roll and aging. Unlikeable characters, but very likeable book. Hard to read on a Kindle because you want to skip around and figure who the heck that character was again. A little Nick Hornby/Jonathan Letham, unusual from a female writer.

Denver’s my home town, so it was great to do a reading at the Tattered Cover’s new, cavernous Highlands Ranch bookstore, which many of my parents’ friends attended. They appreciated the affectionate part I wrote about my parents, and I was glad that my parents were adventuresome enough to give me something to write about. Mom was sort of notorious among her suburban friends for doing things like hopping a freight train across Colorado (and my dad, appreciating the romance and adventure of it all, drove her to the station). Here’s a little excerpt from All Over the Map:

In 1971, Mom got the idea to take us four daughters to Mexico for the summer. This was before her Outward Bound trip, but she was already on her adventure streak. She wanted us to see something of the world outside of Littleton, a suburb where most dads worked for aerospace companies and almost everyone voted Republican.

But mom could only venture so far outside of Littleton. Since we weren’t going to move out of the suburbs—dad, a pediatrician, had an established practice in town, and they both enjoyed the sprawling lawn and proximity to the mountains–she brought other cultures into our home. Or, as we kids saw it, she brought home strays. Every few months, new people would take up residence in the guest room: Navajo children, a Cuban family, Swiss exchange students, and visiting Greeks. During the Vietnam War, she opened the door to several anti-war students who were participating in a program called “ATSIV,” which is “VISTA” spelled backwards, where instead of going into poor neighborhoods to work, post-college kids went into wealthier homes to “raise the consciousness” of the suburbs, and to have a nice free place to stay and meals to eat between demonstrations. June, my favorite of these ATSIV students, splashed around naked in a fountain in downtown Denver just to see what would happen (she got arrested–then eventually went on to drive a cab, join a cult, adopt a guru-bestowed name, and settle in a communal house in Northern California with both her boyfriend and ex-husband, practicing visualization and taking esoteric workshops in self-improvement).

My father wasn’t exactly thrilled with this parade of visitors, though he’d go along with the invasions cheerfully enough as long as he could occasionally shut the door to his den, light a pipe, and read in peace. Dad sometimes lost his affable composure when a hippie student crashed his motorcycle trying to put it in reverse or played Frank Zappa really loud when he came home from seeing wailing babies and fretting mothers all day long, and then he’d decide his consciousness had been raised quite enough. He was more interested in the foreign students than the political ones, and eager to inflict his Spanish, French, or German on whomever was passing through. Now and then he went off to work on a reservation with the Native American public health services, and is proud to say he’s the only white guy you’ll ever meet who can do a complete physical in Navajo.

When Mom brought up the idea of moving to Mexico for the summer, Dad was initially reluctant. It’s not as if you could trust the hippie students to mow the lawn in perfectly even stripes, the way he does. But as with most things—voting Democrat, getting a toy poodle, hosting radical prison activists for cocktails—he eventually went along with Mom’s idea. She’d heard about San Miguel de Allende from her friend Janet MacKenzie, another of the dozen Democrats in Littleton, whose artistic and worldly tastes far transcended the avocado green, shag-rug ambience of the neighborhood. Jan MacKenzie had recently returned from several weeks in San Miguel de Allende, tanned and resplendent in colorful woven shawls and oversized pieces of silver jewelry, her four children effortlessly chattering in Spanish. The MacKenzies had studied at an art school, the Institute de Allende, and stayed at a boarding house in the center of town.

Mom started planning our trip.

After the reading, though, I got to thinking that for a memoirist, I’m really at a disadvantage. It’s much easier to write a memoir when your parents were savage alcoholics or crazy single mothers who drove you around the country in an Airstream and dressed up on Sundays to go to open houses for places they couldn’t afford.

My parents, on the other hand, had a stable and loving relationship, took us off on wilderness trips and car camping in Canyonlands, signed us up for piano and skating lessons, and went out of their way to take us to Mexico to experience a different culture and language–which is what ended up making me a traveler who loves languages. At least I have my parents to blame for that.

My parents posted a New Yorker cartoon on their fridge for awhile: “If you knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, the least you could’ve done was give me an unhappy childhood!”

It was wonderful to see all my parents’ friends at a party that my brother-in-law Roy catered, with beautiful food, Colorado sunny and blooming. Dolores Curran was there, my parents’ friend who is a freelance writer. When I was young, visiting the Currans’ house, it dawned on me that writing stories was actually a career choice, and I never considered another. My parents, perhaps never realizing that they’d have to sit through a reading where I read about my childhood, were supportive all the way, never once mentioning law school. Bless them.

In the July/August issue of Afar, which hits newsstands later this month, writer Laura Fraser explores an oft-forgotten region of Italy called Salento. The story revolves around the Notte della Taranta, a summer festival that celebrates the mystical—and musical—traditions of the tarantella. In the piece, Laura delves into the Salentine version of tarantella, called pizzica. Here are a few clips of video recordings of pizzica—check out the festival, the powerful singing of Enza Pagliara, and this little how-to for learning the steps yourself.

Photo by Lorenzo Pesce.

The thing about writing a memoir is that when you’re writing it, alone in your office, you get obsessed with trying to strip things down to an essential emotional truth, more naked than naked. It doesn’t matter, because there you are alone in your office with nothing but a dirty coffee cup staring back at you. Who cares if you’re naked.

Then it hits you that the damn thing is going to published. That people are going to read it. Your mom is going to read it. The guys you dated and gave fake names to and then described in the book may read it. Friends you went to high school and college with are going to read it. People you don’t know are going to read it and cast judgment on you. They will compare your book with Eat, Pray, Love, even though you wrote your first memoir before Elizabeth Gilbert wrote hers. They will call it “chicklit.”

Then you will want to call up an airline and book a ticket somewhere far, far away, which is your usual antidote to any kind of stress.

Instead, you have to stick around, send out emails announcing the book, do all the social media networking that is required these days, and pray someone buys the book. You have to write targeted Facebook ads and personal essays that tie in with the book and go on the radio and try to explain just what the heck you were trying to say.

It’s all overwhelming. The thought of being so emotionally naked in just a few days is freaking me out.

So tonnight I went to yoga with a friend, which was calming. Then, since we were nearby, we went to my favorite restaurant in San Francisco.

Here’s another time when I ought to keep things to myself, but instead I am spilling the truth about something that ought to be kept private. My favorite restaurant in San Francisco: La Ciccia.

“La Ciccia” means a full, happy, chubby belly, which is the perfect antidote to stress. We popped in to the restaurant and Massimo and Lorela made us feel right at home, speaking in Italian, greeting us like family. All my worries melted away with a glass of prosecco and the anticipation of a Sardinian meal.

We were just going to have appetizers, but one thing led to another. There were grilled sardines on the menu, for instance. And there was spaghetti with bottarga. When there’s spaghetti with bottarga on the menu, there is no way to say no. Then there was tuna with an olive sauce. And carta da musica, the flatbread with rosemary that is famous in Sardinia. Massimo brought out some housemade spaghetti with tuna conserva, just because he knew I would like it, and I did; I nearly swooned. He also brought some fresh ricotta and some little hot pepperoncini with tuna stuffed inside, along with some cherry tomatoes with little anchovies…I was transported to Sardinia. WE had vermentino, we had cannonau, we had a wonderful time.

I was with my friend Cecilia, a size 0, who managed to put away half a plate of the tuna conserva before an entire portion of the spaghetti with bottarga. After the main dish, Massimo brought over some gelato he’s working on: one with bottarga, another with goat cheese and fig, and another with malvasia and dried prunes. The bottarga gelato was interesting–how often do you get a fish aftertaste with gelato? The others were perfectly sweet and balanced.

The atmosphere at La Ciccia is so friendly and unpretentious, and the food is so good, that I was in Sardinia for a few hours this evening, where nobody speaks English, and nobody is going to read a new memoir coming out on Tuesday. On Tuesday, I’m sure my dread will be replaced with good cheer, since I’m fortunate to have so many friends and well-wishers in my life, but for today, I was happy to escape to Sardinia, right here in San Francisco.

No: the booby prize after all those years is a subscription to Bon Appetit. Not a bad magazine, but not Gourmet, and the readers know it. In this age when building a brand is everything, I can’t understand why a magazine company would just throw away one of its best. It seems to be emblematic of all the bad moves the magazine industry has made in recent years, pumping up circulation at the cost of its loyal readers. The magazine industry has been trying to train its readers not to be loyal–to get Gourmet this year for $6.95, and when that expires, to switch to Bon Appetit. This kind of an approach isn’t sustainable, and makes for mass-market magazines that have no personality.

I had the privilege to write for Gourmet a few times, and the way the magazine treats its writers, with old-school respect, is one of the reasons it was able to attract the best writers in the country, and not so well-known ones who would put huge effort and soul into their articles to see them published in the pages of Gourmet. Gourmet cared enough about its readers to send writers and photographers to other countries to search out the best restaurants and artisanal foods.

I’m not a chef or someone who knows (or cares) about the politics within the restaurant industry; I’m a writer who is passionate about what food has to say about culture. Gourmet gave me the opportunity to travel to Peru, to learn why that country’s cuisine is suddenly taking off, fusing a number of disparate traditions. I was able to go to the  Aeolian islands, in search of my favorite dish in the world, pasta with fennel and sardines, and to understand how such a great cuisine developed on such dry, hardy islands.

The editors at Gourmet were always meticulous, particularly in making sure writers saw changes to their stories and were okay with them. If this seems like the least respect an editor can offer a bylined writer, it is, and yet it is hardly the standard in an industry that is increasingly dumbing-down and condensing any story that has a point of view, a voice, an in-depth look. I was outraged to have lunch with a Gourmet editor who told me that when they shut the magazine, they’d been given no warning–no chance to trim budgets, to take another approach. Off with their heads.

So, no, after Gourmet, Bon Appetit won’t do. I want a narrative and gorgeous pictures–what magazines do best, and what magazine companies, in their off-base desire to compete with new media with circulation numbers, not quality, are killing off–not just an intro and some recipes for Festive Summer Brunches. I want food writing to take me to somewhere I love, somewhere I can dream about, even if it’s my own not-so-splendid dining room. I do not want forty more recipes for cheesecake. That’s what the Internet is for.

So I mourn Gourmet’s passing, but think it could be an opportunity for someone who would buy it and keep creating the magazine that its readers love. Instead of pumping up the circulation and relying so much on Cartier watch ads, make readers PAY for what the magazine is worth. I’d pay $100 a year to get Gourmet back. So would many of its readers–enough to create a wonderful, if little, magazine.