The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 January 2025
by Linda Leaming
The Kingdom of Bhutan remains one of the most unique and remote small nations in the world. If you know much about it, you probably know about its quixotic policy of "gross national happiness" and how the rest of the world could easily learn a few things about that. Bhutan is a parliamentary monarchy, a brand new democracy, a small country about the size of Switzerland, with a similarly mountainous landscape but only a tenth the population. It is a Buddhist state, related to Tibet, but unmolested, so far, by foreign invasion. It is modernizing rapidly, and if you go there today, you will see a young nation wired to their devices and an ancient landscape of mountains, Buddhist fortresses and temples.
Even less was widely known about the country when Linda Leaming first set out on a journey to visit. She quickly fell in love with the land and its people, found herself returning often, and eventually setting up for the long term with a job as a teacher. Now, one doesn't want to fall willy-nilly into adopting a culture almost entirely alien to one's own personal history. It is a massive challenge. They don't call it culture shock for nothing. But she tells a story of easing into Bhutanese society relatively quietly. She learns its exotic language, slowly, and her halting speech is endearing to the older ladies she finds herself relating to. The book tells interesting tales of a culture moving into modernity. She avoids a colonialist tone to her tale, thankfully, but also does not tell highly involved story of a culture steeped in Buddhist tradition. Much of her story is closer to the ground than that, a tale of family and finding happiness in a beautiful and gentle landscape. Eventually, Leaming forms a relationship and marries a Bhutanese artist. She is quietly absorbed into his large family and she tells stories of events and moments in their lives. And she relates his own reactions to his first trip to the United States, confronted with all the consumption and waste so common in this country, a place where freedom has come to mean a supermarket full of plastic-encased sodas and cookies. Leaming finds her own freedom in Bhutan, and while there are uncomfortable moments where the reader may wonder why she falls so hard for this remote nation, it is also alluring and thought-provoking.