REVIEW: NO BAGGAGE by Clara Bensen

My review of No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love & Wandering (Running Press) by Austinite Clara Bensen was published in Lone Star Literary Life! This is a hybrid memoir, travelogue, love story and successful journey through mental illness. No Baggage is by turns funny, candid and brave. From the review:

Clara, a smart, observant introvert, a �nice girl who played by all the rules,� was raised in an evangelical household terrified of Sartre. She had a crisis of faith and then, Sartre-like, an existential crisis. Recently surfaced in wonderment and determination from two years of a nervous breakdown, Clara is starving for life. 

Intent on the �unconventional life,� Jeff is intense, charming, and either adventurous or reckless, depending upon your tolerance for risk, with a tendency to allow �playful disruption� to escalate into heedless exhibitionism. His motto is �We�ll see.� As in, where are we staying tonight? �We�ll see.� How are we getting from Budapest to Sarajevo? �We�ll see.� 

No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering is a hybrid of memoir, travelogue, and psychological and philosophical rumination on the American condition in a time of rapid transformation. After meeting in Austin, Texas, through OKCupid and dating for a month, Clara and Jeff bought plane tickets to Istanbul and return tickets from London for a three-week trip through Europe. They used Couchsurfing.com to lay their heads at night��no hotels, no reservations, no itineraries,� relying on serendipity, synchronicity, and the kindness of strangers. The �no baggage� in the title is literal�Clara and Jeff took only the clothes on their backs. It is also figurative in that they were in the midst of a relationship experiment�no traditional commitments�trying to travel without emotional baggage.

Click here to read the entire review. Thank you!