Customer Reviews

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

As you can tell by the 5 Stars I loved this book and was loathe to reach the end, I was so involved in the life and travels of Alice Steinbach.Reaching the last words of the first section, Paris, I was sad knowing her other places of destination could never be so interesting, I was wrong, each had their own charm. The one *reservation* I have, I don't think she succeeded in finding her way as the independent woman she was seeking. She seemed to find at each stop along the way others to validate who she is. That said it takes nothing away from the book...One comes away knowing Alice and feeling she would be a wonderful friend. In fact I must have three more copies, two for friends I know will love it and one for myself..the copy I read I marked so many passages and made so many notes in the margins I want another copy in pristine condition not only wonderfully readable this book is lovely to look at, each chapter begins with the picture of a beautiful postcard...and the messages Alice wrote and mailed to herself, a wonderful idea! Another book by Alice Steinbach I read and enjoyed Miss Dennis School of Writing and Other Lessons from A Woman's Life, I saw no mention of this on the book jacket or in the book but I think after reading Without Reservations the reader will want to seek out more by this writer.

A previous reviewer is right - the title of the book is utterly misleading. Steinbach left her home and job for a year abroad with tons of reservations - both figurative and literal! She stayed at cushy, touristy hotels, even went on a package tour in Italy. So much for the literal reservations. As for the figurative ones, she fretted the whole time about cutting loose and finding real adventure, but never really did so. She used her time and considerable resources to travel like a typical tourist, and the book seldom gets beneath the surface of any location. In Paris she stayed on the Left Bank where tourists chase the ghost of Hemingway and Picasso. She ate at over-priced, tourist-trap cafes and on her first day spent half a week's food budget on face creams. The descriptions are flat and lacking any nuance or vitality, but she goes on and on about some fake grass laid down for a tourist-ensnaring arts festival! This is travel writing for those who like to play it extremely safe.

This book is beautifully illustrated with postcards the author wrote and sent to herself; and it is a wonderfully written account of her travels through Europe. But it is much more than a travelogue. Ms. Steinbach weaves details of her travels along with memories of the past and her hopes for the future.

This book is an inspiration to those women who have always been defined as someone's mother or wife and long to be recognized as their own person, undefined by relationships. So whether you yearn to become an independent traveler in the literal sense or desire to travel through life on an independent journey, this book is well worth reading.

Reviewer: mg69

For Alice Steinbach,a year off means staying at top-of-the-market tourist hotels in the top European cities, drinking coffee in celebrity cafes, taking a group tour in Italy, enroling in a summer school in Oxford and hanging out with other affluent English-speakers and compatriots.

If you want an alternative to this sort of insulated travel experience, try "Au Revoir", Mary Moody's lively account of a riskier year off or Sarah Turnball's genuine life change described in "Almost French".

This book is excellent and very easy to read. As she travels through Europe, Alice makes many keen observations on life & the changes within herself. We all tend to get into a rut with our daily routine and jobs and forget to enjoy life and the beauty around us. This book helps to awaken your soul & reminds you that life can be fun and interesting!

Having heard about Steinbach's book on public radio, and being a divorced mother of a grown son, with my own love of travel, and some experience traveling on my own, I was anxious to find out how the author's experiences compared to my own. I got so much more than I had expected, and was sorry to have the book end. "Without Reservations" is non-fiction but reads like a novel in many ways. She is a fine story teller, and her descriptions of all that she observed in her travels, (from the distinctive and unpredictable rooms she rented in small European hotels, to the views of an amazing Italian countryside, as well as the wide array of interesting, yet unexpected short-term relationships she developed along the way) were vivid and very entertaining. I would have liked a little follow-up regarding her life since her travels which took place back in 1993, but this is a minor complaint. I highly recommend this book!

Who doesn't dream of quitting her job and traveling the world? Alice Steinbach wangles a leave of absence from her job and goes to Europe -- the dream with training wheels. Even though she has the security of knowing her home and job are waiting for her and she goes to countries that are comfortably strange, it is still a big leap for her. She makes the most of it and tells a great story.

Steinbach seems to make friends everywhere she goes. She travels with the attitude of a college student backpacking through Europe, hooking up with temporary friends at each stop. She treats her affair with Naohiro like a summer romance, intense, but sure to be temporary. Sometimes you forget that she is a middle-aged woman with two grown sons and a responsible career back home.

And that is the point. She wants to see who she is when the responsibilities of adulthood are stripped away. Is the young woman who wasn't afraid to take chances still there somewhere? Who is Alice Steinbach when she is not defined as "mother" and "reporter"? In nine months of travels through Paris, Britain, and Italy, she gradually sheds her inhibitions and fears, and gets reacquainted with living for the day.

Without Reservations is an upbeat, sometimes bittersweet, narrative of what feels like a prelude to a bigger leap.

The title of Alice Steinbach's book is a lovely description of what's inside these covers. She is attempting to embrace life without reservations, after years in which she was held back by the workplace, by her marriage, by her family's needs. I think reviewers who look at this book simply as travel prose are missing the point. This is a life journey, not simply one with a suitcase. I found her book very accessible on a human level. I marked a number of pages where her phrases struck home with me. Don't expect this book to be anything grand, along the lines of Henry James' writing on travel, or even the books by Colin Thubron. Embrace this book as a woman's story of a year away from home. What I particularly enjoyed about this book were the connections she made on her travels, not so much the places she visited herself. This is the kind of trip I might be brave enough to take, even though in my dreams I trek to Africa and climb in Nepal. My only critique, which stopped me from giving it five stars, is that it kind of fizzles out at the end. I actually found the final quarter of the book much less compelling than the beginning. But I will certainly look forward to more from Ms. Steinbach.

This is a delightful book, and I am in absolute agreement with readers who wanted it to go on and on. It is not a travelogue but rather an exploration of people and places which illuminates and enchants. Not an insignificant part of the pleasure is an enjoyment of Alice Steinbach's delicious sense of humor. However, the fact that the author viewed her sojourn in Paris and the other European cities she visited as a very independent act is puzzling. How challenging can it be to live several months in a left-bank hotel in Paris? Perhaps if she had stayed for a period in Bangkok or Beijing, this claim would be more credible. Also, a heavier editorial hand would have helped Ms. Steinbach. Her definition of "memento mori" (remember you must die) in the last chapter is strictly correct but in the context of medieval and renaissance society, where the expression was first used, it meant remember you must die and thus you should save your soul by living a good and virtuous life. This meaning is still pertinent so that her friend, Naohiro, who said "would it not be more useful to say...remember you must live" was, for reasons not recognized by Ms. Steinbach, right on the mark. These are insignificant objections to a book which gave great pleasure to this reader.

I picked up "Without Reservations" last week and immediately became enchanted with Alice Steinbach's journal of her trip to France, England and Italy. The book not only gives us wonderful details of the places she saw and people she met, it also shares with us her inner journey. Who hasn't dreamed of traveling without reservations, free to stay or go, to explore more fully those things that we find appealing? Ms. Steinbach does this physically and emotionally, turning down odd little streets of memory and thought, connecting the past, present and future. I think any woman at or approaching middle age would enjoy and understand the musings of where travel takes us, and the trips we ALL will eventually be making as we age, as we let go of some relationships and take up others.

The book is, in addition, beautifully bound and illustrated - a pleasure to look at and hold. I recommend you read it a bit at a time, savoring the separate events, preferably while sitting in a sunlit square or balcony of your own, with a fragrant cup of coffee and perhaps a biscuit or two nearby.

I know I will enjoy rereading this book at intervals every bit as much as I enjoyed my original read, just like revisiting a favorite travel destination or a favorite friend.

My only regret for this book? That she didn't get a chance to visit Ireland and Scotland. Maybe next time, Ms. Steinbach?