The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

This is a jigsaw puzzle of a book that spans almost 25 years of the life of its heroine, Tooly, focusing on three distinct periods of time.  The earliest is 1988, when Tooly is nine years old and leaving Australia for Bangkok.  The second period is 1999, when she is 20 years old, and the final period is 2011, when she is 32 years old and more or less an adult.

The book about constant motion. Almost every character we meet, and there are quite a few of them, is in some way rootless; the question is ultimately is this by choice, by accident, or aspiration.  Many of them have an unclear relationship to Tooly--the reader leanrs about who she is by who has been around her.  

Fogg, the loquacious nebbish who helps Tooly in the bookshop in 2011, is almost the only character with any staying power: he was born in Caergenog and is unlikely ever to leave it, though he considers himself a Parisian by inclination. Humphrey – whose travels, we're told, took him from the gulag to South Africa – claims to have been "cornered by history". Paul seems to be on the run. Sarah seems on the run from herself. The hero-worshipped Venn impresses on Tooly the importance of being detached from the world and other people, and to a large extent, she is successful.

The book is semi-romantic, sometimes whimsical, and at times almost fantastical.  Tooly is an orphan who manages to at once be shaped by and to overcome her past with the reader watching, wondering, and rooting for her.