Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant

Summary:

Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. Dispatches from Pluto is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place.

My take: 4 looks

Laugh-out-loud funny! I am sure my husband was just as glad as I was when I finished this one because I kept interrupting him so I could read him passages aloud.

Unlike other travel books I have read, like Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, Grant's Dispatches dripped, reeked, and sung of honesty. There was no romanticizing the characters, location, flora, or fauna. No pandering to the "natives" or silently looking down on other because of the vast differences in two worlds. The author's respect was as deep as the Delta swamp, and gave this journal a hint of what it's like to be in the deep south at any time of year.

Highly recommended.