Marie McCarthy has such a fluid prose voice, she makes you feel right at home traveling with her on vacation in Ghana, which is not a place many tourists think to visit. Her e-book Travels in Ghana takes you on a short trip through this friendly west African country, meeting a few people and seeing a few sights along the way.
Marie describes every day of her short trip through Ghana and provides a nice selection of photographs, so the reader can really imagine himself there, riding in the steamy Land Rover with her guide Stanley, seeing the buildings, the people, the food and the merchandise.
I sometimes felt that Marie’s content was superficial, focusing too much on her love for photography and shopping, her hatred of fish and unsafe driving. At the same time, these things serve to connect her with an audience of Americans who share the same thoughts and concerns whenever they travel outside of their own home towns. While she was an unusual tourist, choosing a place that your average American wouldn’t think to go and choosing to go see things even the ordinary Ghana tourists wouldn’t choose to see, she had these mundane concerns in common with her fellow tourists.
Although it was a short trip and by its very nature must barely scrape the surface of the true nature of Ghana, Marie’s open mind and educated perspective gave us a nice view of the country, its people, culture, landscape, history, life styles and conditions. I would recommend this book to anyone planning to take a vacation to Ghana, as a way to set expectations.
For me, it mostly served to whet my appetite for something deeper, something more. Of course, this may have been her intention all along.
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