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Summary: A Great Book to Read !
Review: I truly enjoyed this wonderful book. Alice Steinbach makes a very haunting realization when she comes to the understanding that her entire personality and life had been framed by the needs of everyone else in her life. Her life and activities revolved around her two sons, her husband (now ex),her friends, and her career. Like most of us, she felt her world, although it was happy and good, was very small and influenced only by those things that had grown with her throughout her life. Thru her independent travels, she found intrigue in discovering what she might enjoy about herself outside of the influences of her current life. I found this book to be an adventure within my own soul. We should all examine our lives and allow ourselves to grow into our own unique beings. We can ofer so much more to those people we love if we give them ourselves, unique in every individual way, and not just what they need and expect from us. I would LOVE to do what Alice did....what a journey!
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Summary: Interesting enough to finish, but not enough to read again
Review: The "Toronto Globe and Mail" describes Alice Steinbach's writing as, "polished and professional." While the writing was flawless and her journey was interesting, I found Steinbach's writing to lack the emotion and vividness of description that differentiates a readable book from an engaging novel. Also, since I am in my early twenties, I found Steinbach difficult to relate to.
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Summary: Another Self-Absorbed Look at Europe
Review: This is another in a long line of travel books the theme of which seems to be "look at me appreciatring Europe!" I have been to a number of places the author describes, or fails to describe, and could barely recognize them. What is missing is some real idiosyncracy, not just "here I am communing with some long-dead poet or other, forming "instant friendships" with all the most interesting people, and of course, finding a wonderful lover. I much prefer a book like "Extra Virgin" with its sense of the absurd and self-deprecating humor, or for that matter, the incomparable Bill Bryson. I ended up not really finishing the book, but merely skimming to see if there was any interest in reading the author's impressions of my own favorite places. There wasn't. Perhaps it's because the author has very little visual sense: if I hadn't actually been to Ravello and Asolo, I would never have been able to picture them from her descriptions. She is too busy looking inward at how it all affects her. If you want that kind of travel writing, then I can understand why you would enjoy this book.
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Summary: Engrossing and delightful
Review: Maybe because I am about Steinbach's age, I really enjoyed her journey and reading about the people she met. I was a bit skeptical of the closeness that developed so quickly between her and those she met, but I decided there were others whom she met with whom she didn't develop closeness and therefore didn't bother to mention. I was disturbed by some editing mistakes, all of the same type: "Our guide was a smart, formidable Australian woman....When separated from the group by crowd or a tendency to malinger at a shop window, her long neck and elegant head bobbing above the thronging tourists proved a reliable compass." Steinbach means that when SHE HERSELF was separated from the group, but what the sentence says instead is when the guide's LONG NECK AND ELEGANT HEAD were separated from the group. There are several sentences of this mistaken variety in the book. I find them distracting and they make me wonder about Steinbach's skill as a newspaper columnist. And MALINGER! That means to pretend illness, not to stop in front of a shop window. Is it possible that no one who edited this book noticed it should be linger? Anyhow, I did enjoy this book and hated to see it end. I plan to read more of Steinbach's writing when it appears.
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Summary: Terrific!
Review: This book started slow. I wasn't sure I would want to "travel" with Alice - but, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey!
I enjoy reading travel journals while I'm vacationing! This was a terrific read!
Enjoy!
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Summary: Comment for Kathleen
Review: Just a note to Kathleen who reviewed this book on 1-25-01, and which I reviewed on 11-15-00. Perhaps Ms. Steinbach chose her title to also mean "without reluctance" (double-entendre).
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Summary: An Excellent Book
Review: This is a wonderfully written book about a woman taking a year off of her life to see if she can find the woman she wanted to be. I could relate to the musings about her children being grown and her love for them as adults, yet her sadness at the passing of the time of them as children. Her descriptions of her times on her trip brought locations to life that I have never seen. But most importantly, she traveled to find herself.
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Summary: In recognition of a fellow traveler
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I travelled in a similar way though Asia in my twenties and would love to do the same thing in Europe. I liked the combination of travelogue and introspection. I'm a big fan of Freya Stark's books too so I enjoyed the author's discovery of her writing. I'm going to read Janet Flanner's writing now.
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Summary: A wonderful journey...
Review: 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?
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Summary: Quel disappointment!
Review: A friend recommended this book to me so I began reading it fully expecting to enjoy it. But it didn't take long for me to start to develop a strong dislike to the author and her tale. The device of the cards posted to herself from various places seemed juvenile and the postcards themselves fell far short of literary masterpieces. Rather than a free-spirited travel book, this is a very self-conscious piece of mediocre writing by a woman who strikes me as anything BUT independent... The references to art, literature, opera, etc. smacked of pseudo-intellectualism. The account of her affair with the Japanese man was embarrassing.
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