Product Description

Tansy has to escape from her London life. She's desperate to get away from her media job, her coke habit, her dead mother and her selfish boyfriend. But she finds travelling through Asia more smelly than romantic and, besides, she's missing her boyfriend. However, she is determined not to give in, give up or go home. As she travels further east she begins to enjoy her journey – until murder starts to be follow her and the trip becomes much more adventurous than she had anticipated.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43969 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's New Year's Day and the year isn't kicking off well for Tansy: her mother's dead, she's a cocaine addict and her boyfriend has just left her. A trip around the world seems like the only option except that she's not interested in seeing the world, just escaping from it, and the last people she wants to hang out with are backpackers.

Like a lot of travellers on the Lonely-Planet-led Asian Grand Tour, Tansy is intensely irritating at first. Always on the look out for the "real" Vietnam--the one in which she can walk around "like a model, fanning myself gently, strolling into ancient temples and learning about inner peace"--she is opinionated, narrow-minded and remarkably naive (for a supposed media luvvy). Once she has shrugged off her addiction to lines of coke, skinny lattes and Nicole Fahri jumpers, she becomes more appealing. So by the time she's fallen for Max, a fellow traveller, she'll have won you over and you'll be just as worried as she is about the serial killer who appears to be on her trail.

Emily Barr is a former Westminster researcher who now writes for the Guardian and the Observer. Backpack is her first novel and, like Tansy, takes a while to find itself. City-girl pretensions jostle with shoestring-style travelogue and it is only when it hits full-throttle thriller mode that Barr's strength as a novelist becomes apparent. Be prepared for echoes of The Beach--hardly surprising given that Barr was an extra in the film. Also be prepared to get itchy feet--if nothing else, you'll be tempted to reach for that backpack and slap on the insect repellent.--Jane Honey

Review
'Barr's debut comes as a blast of fresh air' Sunday Express

About the Author
Emily Barr has written columns and travel pieces for the Observer and the Guardian for several years, and her previous novels Backpack and Baggage were critically acclaimed. She lives in the south of France with her husband and two sons.

Customer Reviews

Witty and intelligent, I loved it
What struck me most about Backpack was how intelligent it was whilst being so entertaining, this book has a strong voice and makes you really identify with Tansy (despite how brilliantly screwed-up she is at the beginning of the book - very funny indeed). I know several people who have read it after or while they were travelling, who loved the travel aspects of it. It's not just travelogue, though, it's a page turningly good plot, with enough of an intelligent viewpoint on travellers, politics and human relationships to make it way more thought-provoking than the chick-lit style of the cover would have you believe.

So fantastic I had to read it again!
"Backpack" ain't your typical travelogue and Tansy ain't your typical heroine. But beyond this sharp-tongued, foul-mouthed exterior is a deeply endearing protagonist who develops together with this wonderfully tongue-in-cheek book. Join cokehead Tansy as she comes to terms with her turbulent past, discovers Asia and flirts with death - both voluntarily and otherwise.

"Backpack" will make you question your own notions of tourism and colonialism. Did you know, for example, that Laos got bombed by the Americans every eight minutes every day for nine years?

Fantastically written, there are many observations that ring true to anyone who's ever been globetrotting - and many of Tansy's cynical comments regarding the institution of "backpacking" had me laughing out loud!

Add a chilling thriller into the equation and you've got one mindblowing read. And what a wicked twist!

well worth it
I brought the book as I was away for a couple of weeks and it was quite. I seen it in a book shop in a small Spanish town in Tenerife I was surprised to see it there as it was an English book so I brought it was one of the most involving book I have ever read it was so hard to put down that I took it to bed most night till it was finished and was deeply upset when it had finished it wasn't what I had expected from the book but it made me want to travel which I will be doing later on in the year thank a great and interesting book one not to miss