A House Somewhere is a short story collection containing short pieces of work that are either stand alones or extracts from books with one common theme: Living abroad. There is no limitation on the countries where the stories take place and the books carries you from Singapore to Kenya, from the US to Spain. Some places are more exotic, others you may have lived at or travelled to yourself.
I'm not a huge fan of short story collections and this one reminded me why. The only reason I bought it was because I loved the theme. I'm fascinated by the unknown and I'm always thinking about living abroad. And A House Somewhere gave me a good insight with what it could be like, waking up to the sound of rain on corrugated iron right on the shore of a beach in Kenya or going to a Chinese teahouse every weekend.
But as fascinating as most of the stories were, there were some that bore me to death. One, I had to skip almost completely because nothing was happening. This is especially true for the book extracts that were never meant to be stand alones. Taking a couple of pages out of context makes it hard for the reader to follow and if all you get to read are some musings about how hard it is to be a writer abroad, with no plot and no suspense, you will quickly find yourself falling asleep.
I can recommend A House Somewhere to everyone who is fascinated by foreign countries and who loves to travel but you should be aware that you will find some extracts more interesting than others and that the quality varies a lot. With that in mind, I am convinced you will be able to pick out the good bits and love them.