Begin Your Journey With Dear Exile: The True Story Of Two Friends Separated (for A Year) By An Ocean Put Together By Hilary Liftin Offered As Electronic Format

reading the letters between friends and getting a glimpse into life in Kenya as a member of the PeaceCorps, As a twentysomething, I could relate to some of the sentiments expressed about young adult life and accomplishments or rather what feels like a lack thereof,

One of my favorites from a letter of Hilary's:
"When I started my first job, I remember having a separate work persona, which I couldn't reconcile with my home life.
Now those two personas have pretty much merged, I am officially a working stooge, I know there was a reason I kept those two lives separate, but now I'm not even sure what I have sacrificed, As a working girl what can't I do or think It seems that as the years pass, conformity will fester and spread, "

This book made me laugh out loud and sometimes wonder who would be my writing pals if I went away for an extended period of time, Knowing that I'm notsogreat at keeping in touch, even with those close by, I'm not sure if I would have a similar experience but enjoyed looking in on theirs, Also, the ending caught me by surprise, Unexpected but very realistic, I liked that. I was impressed that real letters were filled with such insight and poetic language, After college, Kate gets married and joins the Peace Corps with her husband, while Hilary stays behind and has adventures in successful adulting, They're both great writers, but I confess I found Kate's missives about struggling with justice vs culture and living in horrific conditions much more thought provoking than Hilary's, though Hilary does reflect being equally lost searching for affordable housing, taking jobs no one understands, having various relationships with sucky men who do not treat her well.
I really, really felt like I was watching Seinfeld, Also, Kate's husband is hilarious, I enjoy his short postscripts,

The book is a bit dated now Hilary is explaining what instant messenger and cybersex are to her overseas friend, who is shocked to learn that there are now blue MampM's.


They seem unable to keep up their closeness when Kate returns, or perhaps its just too strange being exiles in the same city, A believeable ending, most friendships are usually in a flux state when you're becoming an adult, but a bit melancholy as well,

Overall, this is anecdote gold, but I am curious in the motivations of the authors in publishing it, Is there a message they were hoping to convey Preserving all that is important in friendship for posterity Make a few bucks

,This is the good version of "chick lit" the kind that is less about shoes and great sales at Barney's and more about the truly deep friendships that women who are lucky enough to do so can form.
This "book" is a collection of letters written during a year's time between a girl who goes to Africa to be a teacher in the Peace Corps and her friend left behind in New York, just having graduated college and getting her first job.
The NY one is a bit annoying in that her life is all about loser boyfriends and jobs at dotcoms, while the Africa girl is trying to fix the world amid mud, poor water, and bugs.
This is anot a very in depth, serious Peace Corps memoir either, The strikign thing about this "book" is the very authentic love taht they share, their inside jokes and witticisms, and the way they support and compliment each other, It reminds me of the best letters between my sisters and longdistance friends and myself, and it made me bemoan the lack of letterwriting in the world today, Plus it is a quick, easy read, that you can set down between letters, I really enjoyed reading this book, It was a quick read, and I also didn't want to put it down, Two women, Hilary and Kate write letters to each other while Kate and her husband, Dave, are in Kenya with the Peace Corps, I was able to read about Kate and Dave being teachers in a Kenyan school, and it being so awful that they end up leaving both schools, but making it the full year abroad.


Hilary is in NYC, and moves jobs quite a bit, but always has something that she's doing, She also moves and dates around a lot, but by the end she lives in her own apartment that she purchased, but is sans a man, I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, I didn't think real letters could have such entertaining, even poetic language, The letters were easy to read, but not superficial or frivolous, My heart broke with Kate as she struggled with her students in Kenya, Hilary's descriptions of her dates and other escapades made me feel like I was there with her, These women are very clever and witty writers, I'm envious of the treasure they possess in these letters to each other, Their terms of endearment and other colloquialisms were such fun to read, Who writes letters like these anymore I want to, a charming collection of letters between two friends one in the peace corps in Kenya and the other in the jungle of NYC, For anyone who has lived in Africa, there will be some definite identification with familiar feelings and experiences, I loved this narrative of two brave, independant women finding their way in the world, Their experiences and observations tug at the heartstrings, while their turns of phrase and wit are charming and engaging, The supporting cast of "characters" are just the right mix of people for experiencing life, Beautifully done. I greatly look forward to reading more of Hilary Liftin's work, Note: this is an old review from my blog

Just finished Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated For a Year by an Ocean by Hilary Liftin amp Kate Montgomery.
After college Kate married David, joined the Peace Corps, and went to Africa, Hilary stayed in New York City and worked on becoming an adult,

The book is the letters they sent back and forth, They are very human letters between friends, not always recapping stories that they already know, The letters show the enduring nature of their friendship and the undisguised love that women can have for each other,

It also gives a real picture of what goes on in African schools and how difficult life is over there, However, despite the fact that Kate worries about living in a town where the water is found unfit for human consumption she never belittles Hilary's problems finding an apartment,

Here are a couple of my favorite bits:

From Hilary, on being single: I know that you are hot and being slowly poisoned by drinking oil.
Even so, what you have to concede is that couples have it better under all circumstances, Being single means carrying groceries home, eating them, reading, and eventually falling asleep and waking up and doing it all again, But when you're in a couple you carry groceries together, Someone slices while you dice someone sits n the toilet lid to talk while you brush and when you settle down to read, someone's leg flops over your leg, a reminder that you are attractive, that you are loved, that even in you solitary activities someone is considering you, that life has meaning.
Not only am I alone every night, but I actively, painfully miss my yetunfound Dave every day as if he were lost at sea,

From Kate, who is teaching at a school that brutally canes students for low grades and even minor infractions: , . . Dave and I feel so strongly that what is going on is horrible, and everyone around us thinks it's just fine, Of course it's all about what a person is raised to believe, it could all be called culture, but I wasn't raised to believe this, and I can't be openminded about it.
Cultural assimilation is all fine and good when it's about not having electricity, eating unfamiliar food, and gesturing for people to come nearer with you palm facing down, not up, but abusing those "below" you is something else entirely.
And on top of that, I don't know if this stuff is really Kenyan culture or the culture left over from British colonialism, or culture created by poverty and hopelessness.


From Hilary, who feels she isn't contributing to the world: When I think about it, it's painfully obvious that not once did my parents say: Young Hilary, you gotta put something back in the pot.
Is that strange to you I was reared to be a good friend but not a good citizen,

From Hilary, after breaking up with her boyfriend: I hate the idea that he continues to pay his phone bills, to button his shirts, to age, to eat, to read or not read the newspaper.
I hate that he lives in real time, that everything he does involves the decision that he didn't want to do it with me, Somewhere he's filling up his gas tank and I'm thinking about the way his arm looks doing that, I'm thinking about how he held his coffee cup when he drove, How his fingers looked, by themselves and against mine,
Generally, I feel that books like this are kind of selfindulgentlike the authors just want to showcase how witty they are, even when writing letters that are totally not intended for publication.


I liked this for the insight about Kate's Peace Corps experience, even though it was depressing,

I think this book illustrated much of what I've read about over and over in documents written to prepare people for returning from Peace Corps, Overall, your friends and family might not really get what you're experiencing, They might not even care all that much, beyond what the weather is like and what you ate, I feel like this book is a good example of that, and I don't think it was intended to be, Kate would write letters about teaching in a school where students are whipped, where walls are crumbling, where there are no bathrooms and students have to pee outside in the trees.
And Hilary would write about how she had cybersex,

I guess they have a charming friendship, though, Whatever.

I raced through this book and loved bring on the outside, looking into this beautiful friendship, Kates letters from Kenya were shockingly sad, Hilarys from NYC were by contrast hilarious and very first world, I loved thisstars. Nice

This book was bittersweet, thought provoking, I enjoyed it and it made me think about life and the different paths friends take in life Dear Exile was, simply put, a revealing collection of letters between two young women.
Kate, struggling to live in Kenya while serving with the Peace Corps with her husband, had to battle things generally perceived as some of the worst injustices in the world: beating children for not scoring well on a test they weren't prepared for by their teachers, terrible sanitation in all ways possible, lack of decent food available to those surrounding them, and, possibly worst of all, the refusal to even try to do anything by those seen as authority figures.
At the same time, Hilary struggles with finding her life in NYC dating, bad neighbors, and getting a job she can go to every day without dreading at least one aspect of it.


Through all of their struggles, I found their separate but parallel storylines to be intriguing, funny, interesting, disgusting, and wholeheartedly too strange to be fiction, I loved this book and reading about the good and the bad of the life of thenPCV Kate Montgomery, especially as someone who is interested in applying for the Peace Corps at some point in the notthatdistant future.
A funny and moving story told through the letters of two women nurturing a friendship as they are separated by distance, experience, and time,

Close friends and former college roommates, Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery promised to write when Kate's Peace Corps assignment took her to Africa,   Over the course of a single year, they exchanged an offbeat and moving series of letters from rural Kenya to New York City and back again,

Kate, an idealistic teacher, meets unexpected realities ranging from poisonous snakes and vengeful cows to more serious hazards: a lack of money for education a student body in revolt.
  Hilary, braving the singles scene in Manhattan, confronts her own realities, from unworthy suitors to job anxiety and first apartment woes,   Their correspondence tellswith humor, warmth, and vivid personal detailthe story of two young women navigating their twenties in very different ways, and of the very special friendships we are sometimes lucky enough to find.
This book was definitely engaging, The letters between the two friends in Kenya and NYC were witty and insightful, but I had a really hard time believing that they were written in so formal a style.
I like a wellwritten letter, but these letters included descriptive narrative that seems a bit too planned out to be spontaneous,

Having said that, whether the authenticity of the writing is plausible or not, the book is a great read, offering insights into both the world of impoverished Africa and a corrupt school system and, at the same time, into the life of a single woman living in NYC, The women's banter is overtly affectionate, almost to the point of excess, so it is interesting to note that the book ends at a place where they live in the same city and yet have never taken the opportunity to sit down and really talk after Kate's return from Africa.
This also made the letters seem forced, I enjoyed the insights of their individual lives much more than considering the central them of the book to be their friendship, I would rate this about a/,

I think my largest problem is it

is fairly unrelatable in my world,
My friends and I exchange letters and they are not nearly so well written, witty and descriptive, I feel that some of the letters are just too contrived, or they have somehow been rewritten to make them seem more interesting, Maybe not. Maybe these were actual letters, unedited, untouched, If so, then they are both extremely good letter writers, and I am jealous of their natural flair and gift,

My heart broke for the students in kenya, My heart broke for Kate who had no running water and had to live in the pit of hell for a year doing her best with her circumstances, . . corrupt school officials, death, malaria, disease, chunky water etc,

Hilary seemed flaky and hard to pin down in some spots, Kind of a sex in the city gal, Dont know what it was,
I am sure that not all the letters were included, so we cant fill in the gaps, she did have a few memorable moments, like the crazy neighbor who swears she is trying to kill him with electrical pulses,


I felt it ended kind of abruptly though, Would have liked some more background and resolution,
.