Whereabouts

Made up largely of former New Yorker pieces, this is primarily a book about living in foreign places as opposed to traveling in them. Out of place is one considerable section on Latin American literature. Reid, who has lived as a foreigner in Manhattan, continental Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, writes philosophically and exquisitely about living in other people's houses and in other people's lands. His "Notes from a Spanish Village," although evocative and excellent, might make Spain seem a bit too precious to some. Despite the globetrotting and foreign adventure, the warmest and most colorful description is from his native Scotland: Scottish hearths in a southern seaside town and in an inland border (on England) village. This is a very personal book for the more sophisticated reader of essays on literature or travel and description. Roger W. Fromm, Bloomsburg Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.