Isabel Huggan: Belonging

Reviewed by JIM EAGLES

Where is home?

For Isabel Huggan, who has roamed the world for most of her adult life, home is everywhere and nowhere.

An inveterate traveller who has been to most parts of the world, she has lived variously in Canada, her place of birth, Tasmania where she was writer-in-residence, and Kenya, France and the Philippines, where her husband was involved in development programmes.

Everywhere she went she made unusual friends, about whom she writes with great warmth, learned much about local culture, knowledge she shares with delight, and developed a deep affection for the land, which flows into her writing.

But none of those places was really home ... not even the old stone house in a tiny village in the foothills of the Cevennes in France where she and her husband are now seeking to put down some roots.

The process of trying to create a home leads her to ponder family, love, memories, travel and belonging in ways which will strike chords with many in this footloose age.

This is a book to savour not only for its marvellous travel stories but also for the charm of the writing and the universality of the dilemmas it explores.

Bantam, $26.95