Review: Honeymoon with my Brother

I think I’m going through a mid-life crisis. Ok, not really, but I'm definitely going through this thing where I'm all, "what should I do with my life?" and "what am I good at?" and "why don't I care more about my career?" and most importantly, "why can't I retire and travel around the world?"

Here’s my shortlist: I want to tango in Argentina. I want to see the glaciers in Iceland. I want to hike Machu Picchu. I want to see the cherry blossoms in Kyoto. I want to go on Safari in Botswana. I want to drive through Ireland and stop at every pub for a Guinness.

More and more lately, a recurring thought has been running through my brain: There has GOT to be a better way to spend 48 weeks out of my year than stuck inside my cubicle looking at powerpoint decks.

And yet, for every time I visit lonelyplanet.com, I'm also experiencing this odd, yet completely natural urge to find an apartment with a bigger kitchen, to get married to fiancé (June 9, 2007, by the way) to stop taking making my birth control and have adorable brown-haired, brown-eyed children that hopefully will have Fiancé’s thick hair and my freckles.

These opposing feelings.....they are confusing me.

Which is why I picked up this book. The author, Franz Wisner was 34 when his long-term fiancé called off their wedding the week before. Wisner, devastated, invited his brother on this honeymoon to Costa Rica. The good times they had on the trip prompted them to quit their jobs, sell their houses and embark on a 2 year trip around the world to find themselves and their personal happiness. Their trip began in Europe, moved east to Asia, then down to South America and ended in Africa.

I really was hoping this book would inspire me. I wanted to hear about fantastic beaches and beautiful wildlife and life-altering moments of clarity on the side of a mountain that would compel me to make a decision about my own life, but that’s not what I got. What I got was a poorly-written, very long diary entry from an extremely shallow and annoying Republican.

Wisner, a former press secretary for Governor Pete Wilson (strike number 1), tries so hard to convey personal growth and inner peace through a thinly veiled literary technique involving emotional letters to his ailing grandmother (strike number 2….hello, editors, we’re not idiots!), yet describes in excruciating detail his desire to feel his ex-fiancé’s breast augmentation (Ew! Strike 3!). He insults backpackers on a global level (including calling Germans “ugly”). He alarmingly describes having sex with a woman in Prague and being extremely annoyed she wanted to hang out with him the next day.

But here is what really got me about the book: Wisner describes, in great detail, a burning desire to re-connect emotionally with his brother, to forge a new bond, to seek forgiveness for 10 years of being so wrapped up in his own career and relationship that he never noticed his brother going through a painful divorce. Well, about 300 pages into the book, they FINALLY talk about it, and the conversation kinda went like this.

Wisner: Dude, I’m sorry about your divorce.
Brother: Whatever dude. It’s over.
Wisner: Yeah, but like, I shoulda been there for you, dude.
Brother: I’m cool, dude.

And that was it.

I’m giving this book a major thumb’s down for being boring, annoying and trite. Or maybe I’m just in a bad mood because I’m writing this from my cubicle while Wisner is currently traveling the world researching his next poorly written book.