Without Reservations
The Travels of an Independent Woman
by Alice Steinbach
Overview
From the Publisher
In the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea and Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, in Without Reservations we take time off with Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach as she explores the world and rediscovers what it means to be a woman on her own.
My thoughts
Just when I LOVE this book, the author goes a little too deeply into her own reflections about life, but overall I still really enjoy this book. There have been a couple of personal surprises in this book for me -- things that jumped out that have meaning to me elsewhere in my life -- that made me laugh out loud and even jump up and down! I love it when an author surprises us with a private joke that we thought was our own!
While this may be the travel essay that borders self-awareness/self-help, I like to think of it as a travel guide as well! There are many places the author visited that I would like to visit too, and I really like her carefree style of travel and exploration, especially looking for the adventure in a mishap.
Overall this was a delightful book that I highly recommend!
Favorite Passage
Suddenly Letty stopped walking. She turned to face me. “Would you like to see some most interesting paintings?” she asked. “They’re in a little gallery just near here. Quite captivating if you like the look of primitive art.” The artist’s name was Joan Gillchrest, Letty told me. “She’s seventy-five and lives in Cornwall, in a small fishing town called Mousehole. She's painted a long while. And with some success, too."
The paintings were wonderful. Charming and sophisticated, they were like something out of a child's book: tiny bold blocks of color painted without perspective onto the flat canvas. It was as though Brueghel and Grandma Moses had collaborated to bring to life the village of Mousehole. Tiny painted villagers marched by, leading their dogs along a frozen canal. Women wearing hats and mufflers stopped to talk by a seawall, gesturing as they exchanged the news of the day. Men in long dark coats and caps stood at the canal's edge, where boats were trapped like fish frozen in the icy waters.
As we stood there in the Wren Gallery, we saw spring come to the village, too: flowers bloomed, cats stretched in the sun, and crabbers sailed in bright red boats straight from the bathtubs of my childhood. Like Alice in Wonderland, I had fallen into a strange captivating country: Mousehole. Even the name held the promise of remarkable adventures.
