Alice Steinbach (1933–2012)

Alice Steinbach was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun in 1993 when she decided to take some time off and see if she could find her true self, undefined by labels. This was at age 59, the year after both of her sons had moved away from home. To do this she needed to travel to places where she was not known and do things that inspired her at the moment. Then see what woman emerged.

She knew she wanted to start in Paris and probably spend time in England and Italy. She ended up spending 9 months including 2 trips home for funerals. Most places she stayed in one location for an extended period. I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir with its combination of travelogue, anecdotes and introspection. No whiny memoir of running away from a bad time in her life, but a true seeker of who her real self was.

She is a great writer as expected for someone who won a Pulitzer for her feature writing. Also, being an interviewer and observer, was the perfect background for her study. Her strategy for travel was to set a loose agenda for the day and then set out; if you got side tracked and never did anything on the agenda that was ok. She met interesting people, had busy and lazy days, good and bad weather, a few uncomfortable situations and some joyous ones. And in the end was satisfied with the woman who emerged. She ended up making some changes to her work life as a result, eventually becoming a full time writer.

I look forward to her second travel book published in 2004 covering 2 additional years of travel. Unfortunately Ms. Steinbach passed away in March of 2012 at the age of 78.… (more)

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.… (more)

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.… (more)