Packing Up
Further Adventures of a Trailing Spouse
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
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The fabulous follow-up memoir to the word-of-mouth sensation Diplomatic Baggage
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'Hilarious and hair-raising by turns' - Daily Mail
'Refreshingly candid. Wherever in the world she is writing from, her warmth and her sharp observations won't fail to delight' - Orlando Bird, Financial Times
'Such a pleasure to read' - Sainsbury's Magazine
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Brigid Keenan was a successful young London fashion journalist when she fell in love with a diplomat and left behind the gilt chairs of the Paris salons for a large chicken shed in Nepal. Her bestselling account of life as a 'trailing spouse', Diplomatic Baggage, won the hearts of thousands in countries all over the world.
Now, in her further adventures, we find Brigid in Kazakhstan, where AW, her husband, contracts Lyme disease from a tick, the local delicacy is horse meat sausage and Brigid's visit to a market leads to a full-scale riot from which she requires a police escort. Then, as the prospect retirement looms, Brigid finds herself on the cusp of a whole new world: shuttling between London, Brussels and their last posting in Azerbaijan, navigating her daughters' weddings while coping with a cancer diagnosis, and getting a crash course in grand-motherhood as she helps organise a literature festival in Palestine.
Along the way, dauntless and wildly funny as ever, Brigid learns that packing up doesn't mean packing in as she discovers that retiring and moving back home could just be her biggest challenge yet.
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'With flashes of Nancy Mitford wit ... Brigid Keenan is as skittish as a kitten with needle claws, as stricken as a deer in headlights, and as smart as a cage of monkeys. Brava!' - The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keenan's (Diplomatic Baggage) follow-up to her first memoir about life as a diplomat's wife is a blend of gentle self-deprecation, confessional asides, and wondrous observations. She presents her stories as a series of journal entries. Topics range from the lighthearted planning daughter Claudia's wedding, coping with husband AW's snoring, musing over the prospect of becoming a grandmother to the discovery of a malignant lump in her breast. No matter the topic, Keenan keeps her tone cheery. She indulges in some name-dropping "I met Annabel Elliot, who is Camilla Parker Bowles' sister" and, on occasion, sounds a bit spoiled ("she thought I, the one-time fashion and beauty editor of the Sunday Times, was looking for a job at Woolies"). When AW's work takes them to Baku, Azerbaijan, Keenan admits, "I am the luckiest person on earth, why do I feel so anxious?" Though she hardly has room to catalog her life of extensive travels, Keenan notes recent highlights here: a drive through the Azerbaijan countryside, a trip to Holland to give a talk, a literary festival including stops in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and a health spa in Sri Lanka. She closes with the trials of AW's retirement, fearing restlessness after such a cosmopolitan life.
