Rash: A Memoir
Rash: A Memoir book cover

Rash: A Memoir

Paperback – June 15, 2017

by
Price
$12.91
Format
Paperback
Pages
292
Publisher
WiDo Publishing
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1937178840
Dimensions
6 x 0.61 x 9 inches
Weight
13.9 ounces

Description

"This highly readable, chatty memoir plays out as a comedy of lofty expectations foiled at every turn."--Seven Days Vermont "Rash... a memoir that shows the other side of travel."--Traveling Book Junkie "RASH is a highly entertaining memoir. It is also authentic and raw." --Family Footnote "Kusel bares it all, all her neuroses and foibles and fears and failures, in a place that was to make her new. Kusel is every woman, her psyche is my psyche and yours as we try to invent and re-invent ourselves into better renditions on the same old theme." --The Mom Gene "There's a lot to love in this book...an absolute must-read."-- Escapeartistes.com "I could smell the sea, see the lush greenery, and hear the monkeys shrieking in the trees."--NerdProblems.com "Raw, honest and funny: in Rash , Lisa Kusel captures perfectly the reality of living in a tropical Indonesian jungle, trying to hold on to a semblance of normal family life while dealing with the physical and emotional challenges that adapting to such a different lifestyle and culture brings. Rash will make you feel the heat and smell the smoke - and have you scratching at imaginary insect bites as you turn the pages.xa0A healthy dose of reality for daydreamers and those who believe the grass is always greener on the other side." -- Emma Bamford, author of Casting Off and Untie the Lines "While it might sound good on paper, running away from home doesn't always lead to salvation. In this bitingly frank and funny tale, Kusel takes us on a journey from her safe and semi-satisfied life in California to her unexpectedly pandemonic time in Bali. I was delighted to go along for the ride with this smart, charming woman, who writes with such verve and intimacy, I'd follow her most anywhere. Rash is a must read for all those who are in search of their own patch of greener grass." -- Sarah Alderson, author of Can We Live Here?: Finding a Home in Paradise "A richly narrated, decidedly wistful, soul-searching travel memoir. Open and honest, Lisa ruminates on quiet insights of the reality behind the ever-present mosquito net. After finishing Rash , I wanted her to be my new best friend." -- Elizabeth Fournier, author of The Green Reaper "In this stingingly satisfying memoir, Kusel uses her wicked wit to explore the flipside of starting over in a new country--exposing Bali's bamboo paradise as a living hell. Rash got under myxa0skin starting on page one and felt like Calamine lotion for my own restless soul." --Nancy Stearns Bercaw, author of Dryland:xa0One Woman's Swim to Sobriety

Features & Highlights

  • Writer Lisa Kusel, while living comfortably in her California home, feels an unsettling lack of personal contentment. When she sees a job posting for a new international school in Bali, she convinces her schoolteacher husband Victor to apply.
  • Six weeks after his interview, Lisa, Victor, and their six-year-old daughter, Loy, move halfway around the world to paradise. But instead of luxuriating in ocean breezes, renewed passion, and first-rate schooling, what Lisa and her family find are burning corpses, biting ants, and a millionaire founder who cares more about selling bamboo furniture than educating young minds. Not to mention Lisa’s fear that one morning she might see the Dengue Fever rash on her young daughter.
  • Rash
  • is an unfiltered, sharply-written memoir about a woman who goes looking for happiness on the Island of the Gods, and nearly destroys her marriage in the process. For anyone who has ever dreamed of starting over in an exotic locale, this is a poignant reminder that no matter where you go, there you are.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(186)
★★★★
25%
(78)
★★★
15%
(47)
★★
7%
(22)
★
-7%
(-23)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Loved this Book!

As a professed bibliophile, when someone offers me a free book I start to salivate a little, like Pavlov's dog. And then, similar to the author in the book, I worry I made a rash decision in accepting the free book. What if I don't like it? I want to be supportive of writers, yet honest in reviewing the book. After reading the first chapter, I no longer was concerned about a possible dilemma I might encounter with writing a review. I thought to myself, "This book is really good."

The main premise of the book is the author, Lisa, convinces her husband to apply for a teaching job in Bali. He ends up getting the job and the whole family (Lisa, her husband and her daughter) move to Bali. Her husband is supposed to teach at a new school called Green School. Lisa had visions of living in paradise, but the new school turns out to be a nightmare. The story centers around the frustrations they encounter with the school and their living situation.

I loved the author’s conversational writing style. I felt as if a friend was telling me about her travels. Her writing style enabled me to feel as if I was right there with her, experiencing everything she did. I also liked how she snuck in facts about the culture and island of Bali. It was a fun and interesting way for me to learn about Indonesia.

For me, the best part of this book was the humor. The author wrote humorous lines when I was least expecting it, causing me to laugh out loud (a rarity for me when reading).

Overall the book was educational, entertaining and humorous, what else could you want from a book?
7 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

I love her voice

Rash by Lisa Kusel is a highly entertaining memoir that will transport you to the idyllic landscape of Bali, introduce you to the Balinese people, their language, food, and customs, as well as giving you a birdseye view of the less than ideal start up of the Green School, and introduce you to the intrepid teachers, including her husband Victor. As it turns out, open hut living amongst the beasts of the ground and air, in the humidity and heat of Bali may not be nirvana, could be Paradise Lost, but is not quite Lord of the Flies! The title Rash may reflect the speed of Lisa's decision to convince Victor that Bali would provide the creative and academic freedom in which to live their dreams. Or it could reflect the tension that builds over Lisa's visceral reaction to seeing her six year-old Loy covered in mysterious rash that could be benign or deadly. With humor, honesty, and wit, Lisa Kusel deftly brings her readers along as her quest for a fulfilling life turns into to a battle to save her family, her marriage, and her sanity. I love her voice, her frank assessment of her surroundings, and her honest reckoning that she shares openly with her readers. Just read it.
4 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Honest, witty, and brave.

I have read all Lisa Kusel's books and love them all. Her novels are super - but this memoir really seems to bring out the best of the author. Supremely honest, witty, dramatic, shocking, and entertaining. Some would say this is a cautionary tale. But I'm more inclined to draw the conclusion that being really, really brave and risking it all to follow a dream may not lead you to the outcome you hoped for, but you wouldn't know that unless you tried. And it's the trying that makes you a hero. The thing the strikes me the most about this book is the author's eye for detail. The story itself is big, but the gems are those small observances placed subtly and almost casually throughout. These are what blew me away, and what will keep me coming back to Kusel's books again and again. I like to imagine the author walking through this world with her eyes and ears wide open, a pen and journal always at the ready to record all of life's small moments; moments that add such authenticity and richness to her work, and that remind us that the world is a fascinating, colorful, and vibrant place - no matter where we are.
3 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Strong and honest writing

I recommend reading this book not because you will fall in love with the author or the place – Ms. Kusel is not the woman she wants to be and Bali is not the paradise we believe it to be – but because you will fall in love with the stark truth of her story and the words she uses to tell it, especially her sometimes dark humor. There were times I wanted to strangle the author for her snarkiness and ungratefulness and selfishness, but if that was all she was, I’d quite the book. She is so much more. She is brave and kind and she uses her sharp tongue to hide her soft heart. She is like all of us: afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of failing. The rash move to Bali forces her to face all these vulnerabilities. This isn’t a happy-ever-after story, if you’re looking for that, but it’s an honest reflection that if you want to change your life, you have to do more than change the scenery, you must change how you show up for the people you love, including yourself.
3 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Lisa Kusel is a Great Storyteller

Reading Rash is like sitting on the couch with a best friend and hearing a tale of misadventure, told with humor and insight. She takes you right into the Balinese jungle, into a bug-infested bamboo house without walls, where her family struggles to normalize a seriously problematic situation. Whenever I set her book down during my read, I found myself looking at the sturdy walls of my house and breathing a sigh of relief. Kusel and her family took a huge risk to find paradise, and missed the mark completely. Her writing takes you right there, to a land of flowers and ceremonies, mud and monkeys, and a visionary school rife with inconsistencies and hypocrisy. Kusel is a great storyteller, and the book is a juicy contrast to many of the dreamy-eyed, soft-focused travel memoirs out there.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Great until it wasn’t

Let’s be honest; critical, negative experiences and commentary are generally more entertaining than pages of praise. She writes very well and compellingly with dashes of humor when the expat life in Bali is rife with bugs, mold, and monkeys. I enjoyed very much her story…until the last section of lovey-dovey make-up with hubby and the good old U.S.A.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

An amazing, beautiful, uncomfortable, crazy trip to "Paradise"

Lisa Kusel takes you on an amazing trip to Bali - a place I've always wanted to visit. But now I'm not so sure. And at times I had to put down "Rash", because I sensed Kusel's discomfort and dismay so strongly. But I kept coming back to her story telling, her honesty, her humor, and her juicy descriptions of life. Every leaf, every flower, every bug sprang to life in a wonderful way. The descriptions of the food made me salivate.
I cringed, I sweated, and I felt Kusel's frustration and pain, and love for her family. Read "Rash", and you'll want to be her friend and go along with her on any journey she takes, or just meet her for coffee and listen to her talk about life.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Brutally honest yet funny memoir of a year in paradise.

I could not stop reading Lisa Kusel's brutally honest and beautifully written memoir of the surprises and challenges she faces when her family moves to Bali and discovers that Green School is nothing like its marketed image and what her family (including her husband Victor, a teacher at Green School and her daughter Loy, a student there) was promised. While Victor and Loy try to make the best of the situation, Lisa cannot—which leads to a worst experience, but a much more interesting book. If you have ever wanted to move to paradise, read RASH first.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Great book to cure your wanderlust

I read this book during COVID/quarantine and as someone who loves good storytelling and travel, this was the perfect read. Lisa's storytelling transported you to Bali and dived into the not-so-glamorous details of living abroad. It was raw, honest, and beautiful. She kept you engaged during the entire book, and I couldn't wait to finish it to see what happened. I doubt any of us will be doing any international travel this year, so in lieu of that, pick up this book and live vicariously through Lisa's prose.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

) At its best, it was a Balinese version of Herman Wouk’s ...

This book wasn’t my cup of tea (yes, pun on that book intended.)

At its best, it was a Balinese version of Herman Wouk’s Don’t Stop the Carnival, but really Rash just explored the experience of The Green School and of the writer's marriage, rather than Bali. There was such a limited amount of contact with actual Balinese people and situations covered. Other than having a Balinese household servant, it could have taken place anywhere some John Hardy type character decided to build an eco-school.

I lived in the Caribbean for many years, so Wouk’s book was highly relatable. Having spent a lot of time in Bali, I was expecting, or hoping for, this book to be about a “fish out of water” in Bali, not just in the micro-system of the school.

Also, to be totally honest, I found the book to be whiney. Maybe that was meant to be humorous, but I couldn’t tell.

Well written; the topic just wasn’t for me.
1 people found this helpful

Related Books