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Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over Paperback – January 19, 1999

by Geraldine Brooks (Author)

4.4 503 ratings

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As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Twenty years later Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness. Intimate, moving, and often humorous, Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Geraldine Brooks' talent is unique: she combines the hardest-hitting reporting with a true writer's sensitivity and an empathy rare for anyone. In Foreign Correspondence she trains her lucid gaze on the turmoil of female adolescence and by doing so brings us a dazzling range of insights that extend beyond introspection to raise questions about national identity in an increasingly global culture."--Naomi Wolf, author of Promiscuities

From the Inside Flap

As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Twenty years later Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness. Intimate, moving, and often humorous, "Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.

From the Back Cover

Born on Bland Street in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longs to discover the vivid places where history happens and culture comes from. She enlists pen pals who offer her a window on the hazards of adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. With the aid of their letters, Brooks turns her bedroom into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the barricades of Parisian student protests, the swampy fields of an embattled kibbutz. Twenty years later - and worlds away from her sheltered girlhood - Brooks is an award-winning foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, reporting on wars and famines in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Africa. But she never forgets her earlier foreign correspondence. Traveling full circle to attend her dying father, Brooks stumbles on the old letters in her parents' basement. She embarks on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends, and to retrieve her own lost memories of the shy Sydney girl who wrote to them. One by one, she finds men and women whose lives have been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of a mysterious and tragic mental illness. It is only from the distance of foreign lands and against the background of alien lives that Brooks finally sees her homeplace clearly. This intimate, moving, and often humorous memoir of growing up Down Under speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.

About the Author

Geraldine Brooks is the author of four novels, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Marchand the international bestsellers Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders. She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Her most recent novel, Caleb’s Crossing, was the winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Christianity TodayBook Award, and was a finalist for the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. Born and raised in Australia, she lives on Martha’s Vineyard with her husband, the author Tony Horwitz.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor; 1st Anchor Books Tra edition (January 19, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 217 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385483732
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385483735
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.22 x 0.56 x 7.88 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #421,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,727 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies
- #4,628 in Women's Biographies
- #12,444 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.4 503 ratings

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Geraldine Brooks is the author of the novels The Secret Chord, Caleb's Crossing, People of the Book, March (which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006) and Year of Wonders, recently optioned by Olivia Coleman. She has also written three works of non-fiction: Nine Parts of Desire, based on her experiences among Muslim women in the mideast, Foreign Correspondence, a memoir about an Australian childhood enriched by penpals around the world and her adult quest to find them, and The Idea of Home:Boyer Lectures 2011. Brooks started out as a reporter in her hometown, Sydney, and went on to cover conflicts as a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Bosnia, Somalia, and the Middle East. She now lives on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts with two sons, a horse named Valentine and a dog named Bear.

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Linda Linguvic

A quest to discover the world as well as discover herself

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2001

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Australian born Geraldine Brooks spent many years as a foreign correspondent covering the Middle East. I loved her book, "Nine Parts of Desire" which was about Muslim women, and I have followed her life somewhat as she is often mentioned by her husband, Tony Horwitz, in his books "Confederates in the Attic", "Baghdad Without a Map," and "One for the Road." I find her an excellent reporter and in this memoir, "Foreign Correspondence," she turns the spotlight on herself.
As a child growing up in a lower middle class neighborhood on a street actually called "Bland Street", she yearned for a larger world. And so she developed pen pals. There was a girl from New Jersey, another one from France, and even one from an upper class neighborhood just a few towns away. And then there were two Israeli boys, one an Arab and one a Jew. As an adult, she found these old letters in her father's basement and, now more than twenty years later, she decided to look up each of these people. What follows is the result of her quest and some wonderful insights into world events from a personal one-on-one perspective. It was fascinating.
As a teenager in the early seventies she was aware of the new consciousness developing, even reaching her in her protective Catholic school. She had an active imagination and the gift of using words well. It's not surprising that she developed pen pals and that they influenced her life so much. Her gift of words certainly reached me too. I shared her sense of wonder and enthusiasm as she looked forward to each letter. I felt her straining to break the bonds of her loving but restrictive world. I felt her hopes and dreams and frustrations. And then, later, I shared her discoveries as she searched out the people who had meant so much to her early life. She writes with a clear voice, painting a picture with details, taking me on her quest to discover the world and eventually to discover herself. The book is short, a mere 210 pages but she sure does pack a lot into it. It's a wonderful read. Highly recommended.

41 people found this helpful

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California gal

Geraldine Brooks' biography

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2015

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I have always enjoyed Geraldine Brooks' stories an writing. This story was unique because it was her biography of her very active life as a journalist and reporter for the Wall Street Journal and others. She traveled all over the world to cover war stories and other important stories. She had a very unique family life lived mostly in Australia. She had pen-pals in various places around the world, because of her worldly curiosity as a child, and followed up later by visiting all the pen-pals about twenty years later. A good read!

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Reader Downunder

A thought-proving and inspirational memoir - with a twist

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2015

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I started reading Geraldine Brooks' books when another Author recommended "A Year of Wonders" - a fascinating look at the plague-village in the UK. Since then I have been addicted to her intelligent style of writing. My only disappointment is that this wonderfully skilled author hasn't written more. As this is a memoir rather than a historical novel, I didn't know what to expect. But as I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, I found myself transported back to my childhood as the fine details of her early years are explored. As so often is the case, it is the small details that give these memoirs poignancy...and Geraldine Brooks is consistently accurate with the details. You can almost smell the home cooking and feel the excitement of exploring new things as a youngster as you read through the early pages.
As her book progresses, lightly touching on her amazing career, I became more aware of just what a person with a vision can achieve. When she explores what happened to some of her friends from those years, and how their lives diverged it left me wondering about the things which shape our lives, for better or for worse.
I personally found that this book took me on a journey that was thought-provoking, sometimes sad, and at other times inspirational - but always interesting.

8 people found this helpful

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Catherine A

I loved this book!

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2020

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Like the author of this book, as a young girl I had a pen-pal. I live in the US, and my pen-pal lives in New Zealand. We started writing to each other over 50 years ago, we have visited each other and traveled together, and now we Skype almost daily (just because we can!) Obviously, because of my history, this book really resonated with me. It was fascinating reading about the life of the author, how she found her childhood pen-pals and how they reacted to each other once they met as adults. I think that anyone, even if they never had a pen-pal, would enjoy this story! This is one of my favorite books!

3 people found this helpful

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J. Taylor

Cover folded and creased on new book

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2023

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This new book was shoved in a package with other items which folded and permanently creased the front cover.

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Yorkie Mom

Brooks is always a go to author for excellent writing that is both absorbing and just a pleasure ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2015

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Brooks is always a go to author for excellent writing that is both absorbing and just a pleasure to read. This book was autobiographical, giving insights into what has made her such an outstanding writer and her personal background. Unlike her other books, this one is really a series of stories about her life through the influences of her experiences with her pen pals both as a child and meeting them later in life. As such, it does not absorb you as deeply as her historical fiction novels, but does truly show parts of her.

2 people found this helpful

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Cheryl Marino

Pen pals, remember them?

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2023

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Anyone who grew up 1960-70 will enjoy this. Loved the travel through Israel and the different characters that were her pen pals.

One person found this helpful

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Elaine

Wonderful Read!

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2012

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This was a beautifully written, poignant story of childhood, family and friendship. The author really captured for me a sense of what it must have been like growing up in suburban Sydney on 'Bland Street' in the 60s and 70s.

As a child growing up in Scotland in the 1970s I also had Pen Pals - a girl from (what was then) Yugoslavia and a Nigerian girl whose father was the Governor of Kano, NIgeria. She went to boarding school and had horses and a pet monkey. Reading Brooks' letters to and from her Pen Pals brought back childhood memories for me, I also remembered thinking these other girls lived in such exotic places and had much more exciting lives than I did. Of course, I lost touch with them but I may still have their letters at my parents' house. I wonder how many readers will be inspired to find their own long lost Pen Pals after reading this book?

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Lee W

WONDERFUL BOOK

Reviewed in Australia on December 25, 2023

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Biographys are not my thing but I love Geraldine Brooks writing and I got this. What a WONDERFUL read. GB is such a superb wordsmith, her writing is magic. The story of her life was great, sensitive, humorous and interesting. I am a Sydneysider and I know the suburbs she was writing about and fully agree with her opinions. I highly, HIGHLY, recommend this book and this writer. You can't go wrong.

Lady Fancifull

Story of a life, the times, and the cultures

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2014

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I came to this factual book by Geraldine Brooks hot on the heels of appreciation for her novel, People of the Book . Brooks, now a Virginia resident novelist, was in a prior existence a globe-trotting, wanderlust-filled journalist originally from Concord, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales.

Born in the mid-50s, Brooks recounts growing up in a deeply entrenched culture where nothing really happened, Australians felt second-class parochial citizens, looking to the `mother country' with deep blue affiliations under Prime Minister Robert Menzies. The national anthem was even God Save The Queen. An underachieving, `don't be a tall poppy' syndrome was rife.

Brooks' parents clearly had wider horizons in their souls, and she and her elder sister were clearly going to be taller poppies.

Desperate to know something of worlds beyond, Brooks began a series of correspondences with pen pals, from before her teens. Fed by initially a fascination with Star Wars, and then later with emerging socialist, internationalist and artistic interests, she had penfriends from firstly, a classier suburb of Sydney, from the States (where she always wanted to be) two pen-pals from Israel, a Christian Arab and a Jew, and a French girl from a tiny village.

Although she stopped writing to all of them bar her fellow Trekkie fan, the American girl, whilst still in her teens, a chance discovery of all the letters some 30 years later, led her to revisit her childhood, the zeitgeist of the times and the place, and trace the development not just of her own identity, life and viewpoints, but also look at how Australia emerged as a taller poppy.

She was also curious to discover what had happened to her several pen-pals, and set out to find them.

The several stories are moving, amusing, heart-breaking, and also surprisingly inspiring, not least for Brooks herself, who discovers that one life, which seemed on the surface to be the farthest away from the life she would want for herself, is one she comes full circle to most appreciate.

She is an excellent raconteur of the various stories and the changing voices from childhood to adult, ranging from Brooks, the budding young teenage scientist with a desire to solve the problem of world hunger through eating weeds - an experiment on mice which goes sadly wrong, to the much later discovery of a sad and long kept secret from her father's life.

I can't resist a little account from the exchanges between Brooks and her fellow Trekkie penpal, Joannie, about the mouse experiment :

"I named one of the control mice Joannie, although since all were albinos I had difficulty in telling her apart from the others. Spock Rudolph and Margot (the latter two named for a balletomane phase I was passing through).................Unfortunately my Mr Spock met a grisly end, along with the noble attempt to alleviate world hunger.......The project fell apart when my mice - the control group, fed on the gourmet mouse mix - began eating each other. The day we gave away the sole - and very fat - survivor of my doomed experiment was a happy one for my mother. Joannie was consoling "Perhaps you just had paranoid mice."

A lovely, absorbing read, which gave me some fascinating insights. And not just about cannibal mice.

One person found this helpful

Fiona H

An interesting memoir

Reviewed in Australia on January 27, 2023

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I come from Sydney in the same era. I related to Geraldine’s perceptions of our society. Tracing the lives of her pen pals was fascinating. Her reflections are wise. I enjoyed this book.

D Johnson

A very enjoyable book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2013

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A very interesting memoir particularly from an Australian immigrants angle. The pen-pal characters were described clearly and really came to life.

JM

Another wonderful book by Geraldine Brooks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2018

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Another wonderful book by Geraldine Brooks. It does explain how she has managed to do the research for some of her other remarkable works. Her descriptions of travel and places are full of feeling as well as precise descriptions. I look forward to the next, though I have no idea what it will be about.

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