Diplomatic Baggage by Brigid Keenan: book review

Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (2005) is the memoir of woman who follows her diplomat husband from one international assignment to another over 30 years, from 1970 to March 2003.

The novel is book-ended by Kazakhstan in diary form. Chapter 1 commences with the family moving to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where a 29-year-old diplomat’s wife, on her first assignment, asks Keenan for advice. The book is about Keenan’s reflection of her own life – the advantages and disadvantages – until the last chapter, where she provides the woman with her answer.

British-born Keenan contemplates her decision to leave her job in Paris as Fashion and Beauty Editor for Nova magazine to marry AW. She begins with meeting AW in a maternity ward in 1970 after the birth of a mutual friend’s baby, and marrying him in 1972 when she was 33 years old. AW’s first posting was Nepal. This introduction could have been shortened.

This is her story, written in the first person, country by country, covering Nepal, Ethiopia. Trinidad, Barbados, Belgium, India, The Gambia, Belgium, and Syria. She finds ways to busy herself, while bringing up two children - Hester (26 at the time of writing) and Claudia (23).

Personally, I was interested in the countries where I have worked and travelled. Therefore I found the six years in Syria, from 1993 to 1999, rather interesting, with descriptions of the Old City.

Overall, the countries mentioned include only cursory descriptions of the landscape, politics, and people. Hence this is not a travelogue. There is an annoying lack of dates, so readers sometimes wonder what year she is writing about. The narrative is funny and honest (although occassionally cringeworthy and not politically correct). Nevertheless there is enough to realize that it is not a glamorous life, but one that is interesting with its own challenges, especially in terms of maintaining relationships.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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