Friday, January 30, 2026

Review: "My Life on Standby" by Heather Smith

My Life on Standby by Heather Smith
My Life on Standby by Heather Smith
Published 2023
★★


A quick collection of the author's experiences growing up as a third-culture kid. There's a lot of interesting material here, but the stories trend towards anecdotes rather than fully fleshed-out...well, stories. My rating is actually pretty neutral, as far as these things go—it's just that this feels like a great book to pass down to children or grandchildren, and as a random reader who likes books about far-off places and experiences that are not my own, I wanted a great more detail and plot and character development. (And...I chose this partly on the basis of "Lesotho Flying Doctors" on the cover, but of course Smith doesn't really have stories about that because she was only a wee child when her father was part of the flying doctors!)

Smith wrote another short memoir about teaching in Uganda, and I might yet pick that up; sometimes more recent memories make for more detailed stories.

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