September 3, 2007
Take a traveler as reluctant as Anne Tyler's accidental tourist and add the number of misadventures found in The Out-of-Towners,
and you have the recipe for Cornwell's hilarious, adventure-packed first novel. Valedictorian hopeful Vassar Spore has her summer all planned out when her bohemian grandmother somehow blackmails her Type A parents into letting her take Vassar backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos. So instead of enrolling in AP courses in summer school, Vassar finds herself hiking through jungles with Grandma Gerd and an Asian cowboy chaperone, and battling food poisoning, venom-carrying critters and primitive tribes (one of which holds Vassar hostage). The more humiliations and unwanted surprises Vassar endures, the more likable she becomes, shedding pride and primness along with her obsessive reliance on routine. Her rapid succession of crises, while jaw-dropping, appears more plausible than the family secret that is revealed bit by bit during the course of their travels. Although readers will probably figure out the mystery long before the protagonist does, the exotic settings and the wacky predicaments will exercise a strong enough grip to hold readers' imaginations. Ages 12-up.