Fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” will find an updated and funnier, more relatable millennial version in Kristen Van Nest’s debut memoir, “Where to Nest.”
The title playfully pays homage to the author’s origins. Her name, Van Nest, is an Americanized form of the Dutch name ‘Ness,’ a farm town in Holland. Much like her ancestors who modified their names, she shaped her own life and wrote her own story.
Growing up in a modest household in an extremely wealthy US town in Connecticut, where gym class sometimes consisted of yoga by candlelight, Van Nest’s classmates had life-size Barbies and real pet horses, while she wore secondhand clothes and had a Tamagotchi digital pet. This distinction propelled her to take action and strive to “have it all.”
She had fantasized about achieving the American dream, where she would fill her fancy mansion with objects associated with luxury, like three sinks in the master bedroom, for example. But she soon found that it was not the path she wanted to go on. She traded the big closet in her previous teenage dreams with that of a rolling suitcase.
In an attempt to fit in, Van Nest realized she likely could not. So she stood out. Not just outside of the box, but outside of the country completely. She was bitten by the travel bug at 16 when her grandmother encouraged her to spend some time in Paris and promised to help cover the cost. She went, and returned. Then left again as soon as she could.
“Where to Nest,” which was released on Tuesday, starts with her boarding a one-way flight to China, a place she had never before visited.
She ended up living in Shanghai for three years and, later, in Luxembourg as a Fulbright scholar. She went on to have dizzying adventures, and misadventures, in about 40 countries.
She writes how one year when she attended a New Year’s party in Berlin it felt like a fresh start not only to the year but also for herself.
“I was also going through a rebirth: one where if you stripped away my work, wealth and social status, I was at my core without those silly things we sometimes wrap our identities around.”