Graduates in Wonderland - Jessica Pan & Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Graduates in Wonderland

By Jessica Pan & Rachel Kapelke-Dale

  • Release Date: 2014-05-06
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 29 Ratings

Description

 Two best friends document their post-college lives in a hilarious, relatable, and powerfully honest epistolary memoir.
 
Fast friends since they met at Brown University during their freshman year, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale vowed to keep in touch after their senior year through in-depth—and brutally honest—weekly e-mails. After graduation, Jess packs up everything she owns and moves to Beijing on a whim, while Rachel heads to New York to work for an art gallery and to figure out her love life. Each spends the next few years tumbling through adulthood and reinventing themselves in various countries, including France, China, and Australia. Through their messages from around the world, they swap tales of teaching classes of military men, running a magazine, and flirting in foreign languages, along with the hard stuff: from harrowing accidents to breakups and breakdowns.

Reminiscent of Sloan Crosley’s essays and Lena Dunham’s Girls, Graduates in Wonderland is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of two young women as they embark upon adulthood.

Reviews

  • Graduate in Wonderland

    5
    By VonRath
    I loved this book! The friendship between Rachel and Jess is so strong, that they can tell each other anything without being judged by the other. It is probably a friendship that everyone would wish for. I read this book from my Iphone on a road trip from Utah to Illinois and I thank Rachel and Jess for making the ride so enjoyable. Very honest, funny and at time tears, believe me you won’t be able to put it down!
  • Great read - pure wanderlust

    5
    By Richhend
    This is a fantastic book - a very enjoyable read that captures what it means to be (or feel!) young in your early twenties and have the opportunity to live far from home, in amazing places like China and Continental Europe. I would highly recommend this - but be warned, you'll want to hop on a plane within the first few chapters and start a few life on the other side of the world! It's also very witty - a very accomplished piece of work by two young promising American authors. They successfully balance very honest accounts of their own lives during three tumultuous years living abroad with mature insights and lots of humour. It feels very real - two lives unravelling and growing on the page - pure joy.