Reader's Comments: M.H.

Here are some comments from Mark Halpern:

I find that Doris' book is not one to be read cover-to-cover, but rather to be consumed in small portions, like tapas, with some time between bites. I've read two of her mini-essays, and much enjoyed them; she has the ability to evoke the spirit of a time and place with a few deft touches, and she retains enough toughness and saltiness to keep her pieces from becoming cloying exercises in nostalgia. At a few points in my reading, I even found myself comparing her work to Patrick Leigh Fermor's great travel reminiscences, and if you know how much I admire his books, that will tell you how much I've been enjoying what I've read of Doris'. I'm reading her slowly; it's not the kind of book you gulp down, as I said, and I've put it besides my easy chair upstairs, to be read when I'm not tired or distracted, and have a glass of port (the real 20-year old stuff, of course) at my elbow. I'll say more when I've read more, but I know already that it's a fine book, and really should be better known. The photographs add another dimension; it was just to do that for Leigh Fermor's books that I tried for a while, with no success, to interest publishers in an atlas/picture book to accompany them; Doris is lucky in being able to illustrate her own books, and they're richer for it.