Traveling a Slant Rhyme: 1973-1974

by Christine Davis Merriman

Overview

When her elderly father dies, Lissa Power, stripped of her identity as dutiful daughter, flees the narrow walls of her American farmhouse and escapes to France, seeking freedom and independence. Lissa studies French, loses her virginity, is accosted by troubling news from back home— gas shortages, the erupting Watergate scandal— and is exposed firsthand to a daily clash of international cultures. In a pre-9/11, pre-Covid world, Europe is a heady playground. Lissa eagerly joins bands of young American and Canadian seekers, vagabonding from country to country, bearing backpacks, Eurail passes, and copies of Europe on $5 and $10 a Day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798987070758
Publisher:	Green Writers Press
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Series:	Lissa Power Series
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christine Davis Merriman is a Maryland-based author, a ripening Baby Boomer whose auto-fiction recounts and re-examines what it has been like, from the inside-out, growing up and living through the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. As former program coordinator/writer for a Johns Hopkins maternal and child health affiliate, Christine traveled extensively in the developing world. She lives with her husband, Jack, in a 1930 farmhouse.

Editorial Reviews

2023-10-19
In Merriman’s novel, a young American woman aims to change her life during a year abroad in 1973 and ’74.

Shortly after her frail, elderly father dies,Lissa Power, an aspiring writer, goes off to Clermont-Ferrand in south-central France, where, with side trips, she’ll spend her junior year of college. It’s a whole new world for a girl who’s lived a sheltered life in rural Maryland. One of her first orders of business is to lose her virginity, which she does with a Lebanese medical student named Georges, who turns out to be a bit of a cad and a sponge, although Lissa remains smitten with him for months. She also makes friends with fellow students from the British Isles and elsewhere, including the Middle East. She spends a lot of time with one of her dearest and saddest friends, but she doesn’t realize he’s gay until late in their acquaintance. There are happier episodes, too, as when she goes on a skiing jaunt that turns into pure slapstick. At another point, she comes upon a Romani camp while on holiday and is stirred by exposure to their culture. Other trips follow, culminating in a long Eurail jaunt at the end of the term. These are all portrayed as experiences that she’ll never forget, and she does come back home wiser, humbler, and more mature. Merriman is a writer of long experience, and it shows from the way she invests her account with almost mystical passages (“At this moment, the whole world as I have known it is swallowed by the moon”); at another point, she describes the delighted father of one of Lissa’s friends: “A huge upturned crevice emerges on the rugged Scotsman’s face, like a rock smiling.” When Lissa’s protective big brother, Spence, arrives in Paris, the author relates Lissa’s surprise at realizing that, in this larger world, their dynamic is different than it is back home. And, indeed, the larger world provides a historical backdrop like a newsreel (as with references to Watergate) that keep readers anchored.

An absorbing coming-of-age tale with bits of travelogue as a bonus.

Kirkus Reviews