Porcelain Travels: Humor, Horror and Revelation in, on and around Toilets, Tubs and Showers

Travel writer Felix (With Open Arms: Short Stories of Misadventures in Morocco) returns with an offbeat yet funny collection of stories of his travels abroad—mainly in Spain, France, and Turkey—united by a common theme: his misadventures with the toilets and showers he encountered on the road . Felix presents a panoply of disastrous bathroom experiences: he begins with a description of having to deal with a Moroccan toilet and “the unspeakable secrets hidden in its depths” and includes his experience in an Eastern European youth hostel with “a wall of urinals that no one had bothered to connect to the plumbing,” which he noticed before using one and felt guilty about afterwards (“I knew I should tell the front desk attendant what I had done”). His bathroom misadventures are often part of longer stories, such as his time spent in the French countryside—“the atmosphere had a novel, celebratory feel”—while having to deal with a compost toilet at a “Creativity Refuge” (an old farm where the owner rented rooms to artists and writers in exchange for labor). It’s a one-note book, but Felix nevertheless manages to entertain. [em](BookLife) [/em]