Alice Steinbach (1933–2012)

I'm having a hard time deciding how I feel about this book - falling somewhere between neutral and wishing it was a tiny bit different.

I think it works much better as a memoir as it does a travelogue since, while she does travel a lot, there really isn't anything here to say what was so great about certain places once she leaves Paris about a third of the way in. The entirety of the Paris section felt electric, there was reasoning behind her visit, who she wanted to pay tribute to, the way she wanted to absorb the city. Everywhere else feels like an afterthought with the occasional exception revisiting her London home and the scene in Rome on top of the Spanish Steps and more focused on the people she either met or ended up traveling with, and even then the people towards the end become lackluster and dull, despite being, I'm sure, great people.

The Naohiro saga is probably the shining star of this book, and really I'd read an entire novel dedicated to just their independent, long distance romance. I've seen that the sequel to this one has more information on it, but it's another travelogue/memoir that I don't want to dedicate any headspace to cherry-picking the interesting parts out of.… (mais)

In 2009 I read a book, Without Reservations:The Travels of An Independent Woman, by Alice Steinbach that I absolutely loved. She was a journalist and had won a Pulitzer while working at the Baltmore Sun. She wrote Reservations about a rough time in her life when she was suddenly both an empty nester and an ex-wife. She had an option for recovery that not many of us have, she decided to take a year's sabatical and travel in Europe. The book is an account of that year.

I put the title of her frst book, The Miss Dennis School of Writing and Other Lessons from A Woman's Life, on my list then, and unbelievably ran across a copy just before Christmas 2020! Its a collection of pieces that were published in the Sun between 1985 and 1995. I so wanted to love them and probably would have if I had read them then, but many are just not relatable now, women's lives have changed so much. Those that are still timely are primarily about children.… (mais)