WITHOUT RESERVATIONS

The travel memoir of a professional woman on a Grand Tour.

In 1993 Steinbach, Pulitzer-winning journalist and divorced mother, went on a nine-month sabbatical in Europe. "In this, my Year of Living Dangerously, I was . . . wading into the stream of the unknown, accepting whatever the gods had to offer." Her sojourn begins in the Faubourg-St. Germain during a Parisian spring, where she meets Naohiro, a Japanese widower in whom she develops a romantic interest. In London for the summer, Steinbach meets a trio of women who become her nursemaids when she falls ill; she befriends Jean, an Australian psychoanalyst, at Freud’s house and joins her for dinner with the smart set. Steinbach enrolls in a late-summer course at Oxford, learns an important lesson about ballroom dancing from Barry, her pot-bellied instructor, and wanders up and down the Italian peninsula, frequently turning to memories of Naohiro for emotional sustenance and to the words of Freya Stark for spiritual guidance. If the adventure evolves without the higher risk of other kinds of travel (and travel memoirs), and if the dramatic episodes primarily involve civilized exchanges with shop clerks and museum- goers, Steinbach doesn’t make more of getting lost around Brasenose College or of hitting upon the perfect wedding gift for a temporary friend than she can (or should); the book quickly loses its early sense of willed promise and gains a likable, well-mannered modesty as it unfolds—the quiet, nothing-to-it triumph of getting from an unfamiliar airport to a distant hotel.

Not a major work, perhaps, but if a minor one, then well done.