Customer Reviews

Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Alice Steinach loves traveling, loves writing, and loves learning. So she wrote her own job description and spent a year taking different classes around the world from French cuisine to Scottish sheepdog handling. The result is "Educating Alice", a trip around our planet without jetlag. There are eight chapters, one for each class.

Cookin' at the Ritz: Every woman has dreamed of taking a course in cooking at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Alice Steinbach actually had the courage to do it. It's absolutely fascinating to be able to see inside the Ritz's kitchens without having to worry that Chef will raise his eyebrows if your mushrooms aren't sliced perfectly.

Dancing in Kyoto: The only way to find out why girls really become geishas is to take a dance lesson from one as Steinbach did. Apparently, the geishas aren't too happy about Arthur Golden's ""Memoirs of a Geisha." Here are the real facts of a geisha's life.

The Mystery of the Old Florentine Church: Steinbach took as her special project investigating the terrible floods in 1966 that turned the narrow streets of Florence into raging rivers. Steinbach found the human story behind the statistics.

Sense and Sensible Shoes: If you're a Jane Austin fan, this chapter is for you. Steinbach visited Chawton House, near Winchester, England - the manor once owned by Jane's brother - along with an all-star guest list of Austin experts.

Havana Dreams: There's so much politics talked about Cuba that it was a relief to see the island as ordinary Cubans experience it. I have a new respect for these endlessly cheerful people thanks to Educating Alice.

The Secret Gardens: This chapter is for gardeners. Steinbach went on a tour of famous gardens in Provence, France. To the French, gardening is an art form and Provence offers the perfect climate for enthusiastic gardeners.

The Unreliable Narrator: This chapter was a new take on a class for writers. Steinbach signed up for a course in Prague, Czechoslovakia. This is another class where you need to be a good sport. Steinbach is one.

Lassie Come Home: If you've ever struggled to teach your dog to sit on command, Steinbach has a challenge for you: Take a course learning to control the Border collies that Scottish shepherds use to herd sheep. They are the most amazing dogs.

After having enjoyed Steinbach's previous book, Without Reservations, I was eager to see what she has been up to in the past few years and if she and Naohiro are still an item. In Without Reservations, Steinbach tells the story of how she took a year off from her job, bought an apartment in Paris and fell in love. It is a story of risk and reward. It really happened, but Steinbach tells it like a story.

In Educating Alice, Steinbach has quit her newspaper job for good. The royalties from Without Reservations must be rolling in, because now she can afford to take classes at the Ritz cooking school in Paris, geisha school in Kyoto, and a tour of lovely gardens in Avignon. Not much risk here. There is nothing connecting the classes, other than that Steinbach is interested in the subjects.

The only thread that runs through the entire book besides Steinbach herself, is Naohiro, her lover from Without Reservations. But the relationship is established and both Alice and Naohiro seem content to leave it as it is. So there is no conflict or drama. If I hadn't known Naohiro from the previous book, I'm not sure I would have been interested in their romance, which is conducted in Educating Alice mostly through letters.

I did enjoy reading about Steinbach's adventures at the Ritz in Paris, the first and best chapter of Educating Alice. Her view of the Upstairs, Downstairs nature of the grand hotel and her descriptions of her classmates and the chef are entertaining. Her discovery of the Oltrarno section of Florence is pleasant, and the adventures she has in Havana are the liveliest of the bunch.

Steinbach says of the Prague creative writing workshop she attends in one chapter, that "I thought the use of fiction techniques might improve my work as a nonfiction writer." While the individual chapters of Educating Alice are told as short stories, it would have been rewarding if the chapters had been parts of a larger story, as well. She didn't need the writing workshop at all. She showed in Without Reservations that she has already mastered that technique.

Alice Steinbach's childhood hero was none other than Nancy Drew --- an inspiration that serves her well as she travels the world on eight adventures that take her from a geisha house in Kyoto to a salsa bar in Old Havana, from Scotland's Border country to a church crypt in Florence, Italy.

In Kyoto, Alice recalls speaking with a group of Japanese women she had just met. "What I was looking for," she writes, "were all the details that might offer a glimpse into their lives. It was the way a reporter attempts to catch the shape of a story through a slightly open door. But I had come to Kyoto as a student, not a reporter. Still, old habits die hard."

She might be traveling the world as a student, but the skills she honed as a reporter --- which earned her a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing at the Baltimore Sun --- are what make EDUCATING ALICE such an outstanding book. Not content to be a tourist, Alice looks beyond the ordinary in every place she visits --- seizing opportunities, striking up conversations with strangers, and going out of her way to research things that interest her.

Alice's education begins in Paris, where she is enrolled for three weeks in the Hotel Ritz's culinary school. She does much more than recount the slicing, dicing, julienning and baking that she performs in class. She relays interesting details about the "Upstairs, Downstairs" aspect of the Ritz; introduces us to her classmates and the imposing Chef Moreau; reveals historical facts about Paris and the Right Bank, where she is staying for the first time after many trips to the city; and sprinkles in personal details, including memories of her grandmother, whose brown sugar candy can't be replicated because the recipe has been lost. By the time you bid au revoir to Paris, you know you're in for a colorful jaunt around the world.

Next it's on to Kyoto, where Alice participates in lessons with experts in origami, flower arranging, tea ceremony, antiquities appreciation, traditional dancing and woodblock printmaking. It's also the site of her rendezvous with Naohiro, a Japanese man she introduced in her first book, WITHOUT RESERVATION, and with whom she's having a whirlwind international romance.

In Florence, where she is taking an art course at the British Institute, Alice finds that it's outside the classroom --- along the Borgo Pinto to be exact --- where her real education about the city's history takes place. Alice's further adventures take her to England in Jane Austen's footsteps; to Havana, "a city that has a way of turning things upside down," where a trip to study art and architecture becomes a character study of its people; to Provence, where she tours private gardens with renowned author and expert Louisa Jones; to Prague, where a fiction writing workshop with Mary Morris pales in comparison to her discovery of a painting created by a young Jewish artist named Lily; and finally to a thousand-acre sheep farm in Scotland, where she savors her luck at coming across the candy her grandmother used to make ... and even manages to come away with the recipe.

Alice's brand of storytelling combines equal parts travelogue, historical narrative, personal diary and witty cultural commentary. By the time you bid her bon voyage, you'll know two things for certain. First, there are only two kinds of travelers --- those who are curious and those who are not. And second, when Alice Steinbach next beckons, you won't be able to resist the allure of her company.

--- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna

A lovely book for a summer read. It lingers over interesting places you would like to visit. One day I wanted to go to England to Jane Austen's home and the next I was reading of Florence, Italy and daydreaming of my trip there 10 years ago. A quick read but some "adventures" I read again. Written with humor and quirky observations really made this a favorite!

I really enjoyed Steinbach's book, Without Reservations, so I decided to read this one. The first few adventures were well written, with lots of interesting details and personal observations, plus meetings with locals. I particularly enjoyed her not-the-usual tourist activities in Cuba.

I was impressed by her ability to enjoy the courses she took without giving lectures to the reader. But that changed when she went to see gardens in Provence. Boorrrinnnggg! I'm not a gardener and I barely made it through that chapter. The writer's workshop in Prague interested me as a person who's been to Prague and to U.S. workshops. But she didn't make friends with a single student, and frankly, I thought she was in way over her head as a journalist trying to write fiction. Her efforts to write about the Holocaust were persumptuous to say the least. I was deeply offended and skipped her italicized fiction.

The last chapter, about border collies in Scotland, was even more boorriingg than the gardens chapter. I simply could not read it, having read an entire book on the subject about ten years ago. Ugh.

I also agree with reviewers here who want to know how and why she chose her destinations. And who paid for them!! Luxury hotels and all.

The best thing about this book was the interest it sparked in me for adventures I had previously not considered. I'm now seriously thinking of doing two-week learning stints in interesting locations rather than the relaxing visits or typical tourist approach to seeing other cultures and countries.

The worst thing about the book was never warming up to the author. I would have liked to feel her a kindred spirit as she seemed to find all over the world, but though I appreciated seeing through her eyes, I never felt an affinity for her as a person.

To get the most out of travel, one should have a purpose, such as viewing a particular type of art, collecting foreign miniatures, etc. Alice Steinbach selected "studies"--and what a variety of subjects she chose to learn! Each chapter takes the reader with her into an area of a different country, and leaves one wanting to sharethat very place. From Paris, where she starts from her "fumbling" and somewhat embarrassing days as she began taking cooking lessons at the Ritz, to the last chapter when she tried to learn to train Border Collies to herd sheep in Scotland, the reader goes with Alice, In Japan she stumbles into stylized dancing class and learning Geisha lifstyle. In Cuba, we make new friends of friendly Cubans and discover a great Jazz band. We almost get lost in hidden gardens in France, and wish we were there. We study Jane Austen in England and get an intimate feel of the English countryside, and we help her unravel historic mysteries of an old church in Florence, one that she enters by mistake because she is lost. In Prague we share her own writing for a class, and watch the development of a WWII story as it unfolds with her own adventures. We're indignant at her classmates and their editorial criticisms--but love her outside adventures in Prague. This book is a must for anyone planning to go anywhere--Makes one want to BECOME an Alice!

This book was an interesting travelogue of sorts, but does not compare to the beautiful writing of Alice's previous book, Without Reservations. Without Reservations was a journey not only to wonderful destinations which she experienced in depth, but it was also her personal journey of being a 50-something, divorced woman who was also learning how to slow time and experience everything around her. Educating Alice felt like several disconnected chapters that while interesting, were not really related to one another well enough to make me care about moving on to the next chapter. That disjointed feeling left me believing that Alice has maybe fallen back into a hectic schedule of running from place to place and thing to thing in her life. While Without Reservations was beautiful prose to be savoured, parts of Educating Alice read more like a travel column.

The three star rating says it all---it was OK, but not as great as its predecessor.

As I read this book I was baffled as to how or why Steinbach won a Pulitzer. To do her justice I'll have to look up some of her newspaper work. But I found her travel writing stultifying. As she dabbles her way around the world, she never gets below the surface of any of the places she visits but rather experiences them through contrived, packaged, tourist experiences. We're only left to imagine what the locals thought and said after this American tourist tried on their culture through one made-for-the-tourist-trade "learning" experience after another. Steinbach drops the names of many authors and she regularly reminds us that she adores Proust, but the "literary" source she references with irritating frequency is Nancy Drew. And the ongoing references to her romantic relationship with a Japanese man she met in Paris seem gratuitous. Quoting her letters to him extensively just seemed like filler for the book she needed to write to pay for her travels. And I agree with a previous reviewer that her foray into fiction based on a young girl who died in the Holocaust was a real mistake. The "story" that resulted, which met with predictable indifference in a writing workshop in Prague, is trite, movie-of-the week level writing. Her presumption in inventing a Holocaust story when she actually crosses paths with at least one survivor willing to talk about her life is typical of the uninformed assumptions made on many topics in this book.

I have been reading Educating Alice at night before I go to sleep. The chapters about studying in Paris, Japan, and Italy were interesting enough to keep me awake for a while. I love the writing about Cuba because I know nothing about that country. However, I'm on the section about the gardens of Provence. I've been stuck here for a while, and I'm having no trouble sleeping now! Alice takes all of these classes around the world, but none seem related. I'm wondering why we should care about these classes. I wish she would have focused on her relationship with Naohiro, her romance from the first book. Her adventures weren't as exciting as the first book.