Two O'Clock on a Tuesday at Trevi Fountain

April 15, 2024
In Sula's memoir, after narrowly avoiding the London bombings of 2005, a young woman opens her eyes to the vastness of the world beyond her home in Dallas, Texas. In this millennial's remembrance, the travel bug, the nagging dissatisfaction of multiple soulless office jobs, and a climbing accident leave the author fearing a life lived in regret. Sula's married to her high school sweetheart, Michael, and together they dream up a goal: to live abroad. The couple lead a mundane life in Dallas with a mortgage, two dogs, and a sense of belonging in the city where they've lived their whole lives. To uproot and delay starting a family by moving to an unfamiliar country sounds like a strange undertaking to their friends and relatives. Despite challenges including Michael's mother's terminal cancer diagnosis and Sula getting fired from her remote job, she eventually turns a travel blog into a business and accrues a solid following on social media. The idea is to adventure through Europe without forfeiting the stability of a conventional lifestyle: "The risk we often overlook is waiting to pursue our dreams, pushing them off to a future that we hope will bring us closer to them. We make countdowns for the grand events in our futures, but we risk wasting our lives when we don't pursue now, today, what truly matters to us." Sula and her husband move to Heidelberg, Germany, with their dogs, where they continue to build her blog, travel at every opportunity, and wade through a labyrinth of visa applications. While the prose is energetic throughout, the narrative is often hampered by a haphazard structure. The chapters tend to begin in the middle of the action, abruptly flashback to a memory, and offer tangential commentary on random topics. The writing is conversational and indifferent to conventional grammar. The theme itself--Gen Y leveraging social media to gain economic and geographic freedom--is tempered by genuinely expressed excitement for new experiences. The book's major strength is in the details of places and events that could inspire anybody to book that vacation that's been on the back burner for too long. Millennial-meets-world in this memoir of persistent planning to live the life you desire.

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