|
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
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
