THE LAST GRAND TOUR

A down-in-the-dumps tour guide finds love while shepherding obstreperous clients across the Alps in McGregor’s mordant romance.

Depressed over his failing marriage, Joe Newhouse, a Munich-based expat American tour operator, books a gig conducting employees of the Portland video game company Luckspur on a meandering trip from Munich to Venice. The fractious group includes Rudy, the company’s domineering marketing chief; his secretary and girlfriend Sarah; their perpetually complaining coworker Felicity; and her kind, long-suffering husband Donald, the company’s lawyer. The one bright spot, from Joe’s perspective, is Tonia Gluck, the beautiful and charismatic wife of Luckspur’s owner Gerhard Gluck, who dropped out of the tour at the last minute. Joe drives the group south in his battered tour bus, stopping at off-beat hotels run by his hard-drinking cronies, the site of Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat in Berchtesgaden, and a performance of Cosi Fan Tutte in Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg. The Luckspur employees complain about the callous, manipulative Gerhard and pick at each other over past antagonisms, but Joe’s disdain softens as he learns more about them. Joe and Tonia bond over art, poetry, and Ludwig II, the mad king of Bavaria; while touring his fairy-tale palace at Herrenchiemsee, Joe and Tonia begin a sexually adventurous affair. McGregor’s yarn features sharp-edged but complex characters who revel in European culture while approaching the open road as a pathway to liberation or a flight from responsibility. His smart, elegant prose sparkles as it evokes the tawdrier side of tourist glitz (“Worse still were the surly waitresses, their breasts popping out from worn-out dirndls, pretending they spoke only Bavarian while overcharging for beers”) but also conveys intense psychic extremes (“she threw her head back and laughed—a loud cackling laugh that made me think of hyenas on nature shows, their teeth reddened with entrails”). The result is a captivating exploration of the promise and burden of passionate love.

An entertaining, deeply felt story of giddy hopes straining against harsh realities.