RaveChicago Review of BooksWhat is uncovered about this journey of self through studying or teaching abroad is not revelatory—surely anyone who’s immersed themself in another culture is going to have felt similar things as Polly, even if they’ve not dissected it in such an articulate way—but what makes this memoir special is Barton’s unequivocal and complicated love for the nuances of meaning, and of Japan, even as she struggles to feel at home in Sado, or even cosmopolitan Tokyo ... Barton as a writer is searching, analytical, sharp; the character of younger Polly she portrays is precocious, naive, and stubborn, sometimes frustratingly so (but she’s twenty-one, so you can’t hold her to it). Reading Barton in critical conversation with other texts—she loves Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet—is a joy ... the text’s power is often undercut by moments of excessive self-cogitation and psychoanalysis. But Barton’s insight into and passion for language is ultimately a wonder.
