Backpack
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Backpack for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
It's New Year's Day and the year isn't kicking off well for Tansy: her mother's dead, she's a cocaine addict and her boyfriend has just left her. A trip around the world seems like the only option except that she's not interested in seeing the world, just escaping from it, and the last people she wants to hang out with are backpackers.
Like a lot of travellers on the Lonely-Planet-led Asian Grand Tour, Tansy is intensely irritating at first. Always on the look out for the "real" Vietnam--the one in which she can walk around "like a model, fanning myself gently, strolling into ancient temples and learning about inner peace"--she is opinionated, narrow-minded and remarkably naive (for a supposed media luvvy). Once she has shrugged off her addiction to lines of coke, skinny lattes and Nicole Fahri jumpers, she becomes more appealing. So by the time she's fallen for Max, a fellow traveller, she'll have won you over and you'll be just as worried as she is about the serial killer who appears to be on her trail.
Emily Barr is a former Westminster researcher who now writes for the Guardian and the Observer. Backpack is her first novel and, like Tansy, takes a while to find itself. City-girl pretensions jostle with shoestring-style travelogue and it is only when it hits full-throttle thriller mode that Barr's strength as a novelist becomes apparent. Be prepared for echoes of The Beach--hardly surprising given that Barr was an extra in the film. Also be prepared to get itchy feet--if nothing else, you'll be tempted to reach for that backpack and slap on the insect repellent.--Jane Honey
Product Description
Tansy has to escape from her London life. She's desperate to get away from her media job, her coke habit, her dead mother and her selfish boyfriend. But she finds travelling through Asia more smelly than romantic and, besides, she's missing her boyfriend. However, she is determined not to give in, give up or go home. As she travels further east she begins to enjoy her journey - until murder starts to follow her and the trip becomes much more adventurous than she had anticipated.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What struck me most about Backpack was how intelligent it was whilst being so entertaining, this book has a strong voice and makes you really identify with Tansy (despite how brilliantly screwed-up she is at the beginning of the book - very funny indeed). I know several people who have read it after or while they were travelling, who loved the travel aspects of it. It's not just travelogue, though, it's a page turningly good plot, with enough of an intelligent viewpoint on travellers, politics and human relationships to make it way more thought-provoking than the chick-lit style of the cover would have you believe.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have no idea why I picked this up. Maybe it was the sticker offering a round world ticket from Bridge the World, maybe it was the title. It certainly wasn't the jacket which was atrocious and did no justice to the intelligent writing of Emily Barr. I loved it. Like many of the other reviewers I have also been travelling but you tend to forget your first impressions of countries. I found it refreshing to read a description of Vietnam which evoked the other side of the country. Yes it is amazing to look out of train windows and see paddy fields and workers in conical hats but you are also driven insane by the cacophony of scooter horns and nothing evokes travelling for me more than the smell of drains and rotting vegetables! I would have been happy with a book revolving around her development as a person, I thought the sub plot of murders was intriguing but it didn't need to all tie up so neatly at the end. I get the feeling Emily Barr felt she ought to do that for the book to be a novel rather than a travelogue and to be honest I prefer the latter. Tansy was a refreshing change to the angst ridden Bridget Jones heroine, she reminded me of Katya in What Katya Did Next...published a few years ago and resulting from a column in the Melbourne Age.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fantastic book, clever and well written. i do have to agree the end was somewhat sickly sweet but don't we all love happy endings?! Laugh out loud funny in places but very very gripping throughout. i read it from start to finish in 5 hours!!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Brilliant
Love it! Well written, excellent plot and hilariously funny in places. Just re-read it (having run out of books whilst on holiday) and enjoyed just as much the second time round! Read more
Published 2 months ago by KS
Emily Barr on form - do not judge this book by its cover!
The gritty, realistic themes that run through others of Emily Barr's books are also there in 'Backpack'. Read more
Published 9 months ago by flossy9
Entertaining especially if you've backpacked.
Having left England in 2008 feeling disillusioned and narked off with the UK I can identify with Tansy and the scene at the airport when she barely makes her flight raised giggles,... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Richard Mann
Very good interesting read!
This is the first Emily Barr book I've read, so it took me a little while to get used to her style. It starts of jittery and jumpy, so isn't very easy to follow. Read more
Published on 6 April 2010 by Jessica O'Shea
Gripping read! Would be an amazing film!
This would make the most amazing film! I've never read Emily Barr, but I borrowed this off my sister-in-law, and I had to buy my own, so I could re-read it over and over again. Read more
Published on 14 Aug 2009 by Sunkissd
Loved it!!!!
I initially dismissed this book as a light-hearted chick lit holiday read but I soon found myself drawn in to the book with the great writing, the interesting characters and the... Read more
Published on 21 April 2007 by Ms. K. N. Hill
Interesting!
I began this book disliking the main character somewhat and almost dismissed this as just another chick-lit, even though I had previously read and enjoyed 'Baggage' by the same... Read more
Published on 26 Oct 2006 by JL McKinnon-Johnson
Great read
I really enjoyed this book, The characters were deep and complex and the setting and countries described perfectly. Read more
Published on 11 Jun 2006 by kimmy
well worth it
I brought the book as I was away for a couple of weeks and it was quite. I seen it in a book shop in a small Spanish town in Tenerife I was surprised to see it there as it was an... Read more
Published on 20 July 2005 by "b-i-b"
Well observed travel fiction
A fairly bold move giving the book the title backpack as this immediately puts it in the firing line, but as fiction travel writing the book stands up well, and has a very... Read more
Published on 26 Oct 2004 by simon gurney
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
