Another of those pointless anthologies of travel pieces by women can write, women can travel, ergo let's have a collection of travel pieces by women writers, shall we but the cast list is undeniably classy, featuring as it does Alice Walker, Carol Shields, E. Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, whose memoir of a trip to the Galapagos Islands with her father is a joy, and Clare Boylan, whose account of a weekend spent in London with her mother is unforgettable. I particularly liked the Lebanese writer Hanan alShazkh's witty retelling of her search for a miallima (a sort of feisty Arab female) in Cairo, and sympathised with editor Katherine Govier's irritation at the ubiquitous and iniquitous "guide" scams which afflict even the most well meaning tourists in Morocco. But I'm still not convinced by her argument, though she argues it well, in favour of positive discrimination for travel writers who happen to be women.
