Alice steinbach and naohiro takahara

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

by Alice Steinbach

Published by Random House

pages,

Sentimental Journey

Reviewed by Andrea MacPherson

Without Reservations is a travel memoir by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Alice Steinbach, detailing her yearlong travels throughout Europe as a self-proclaimed "independent woman."

Deciding she needs a drastic change in her life, Steinbach takes a leave of absence from her job as a journalist to move to France.

Alice steinbach and naohiro takahara

She envisions the trip as a journey of independence, in which she will attempt to understand what it truly means to be a woman in the middle phase of her life, her children now grown and gone, and herself divorced. She imagines a metamorphosis of self; a year in which she will become a different woman entirely.

As such, Steinbach rents a small flat and proceeds to explore her new surroundings and herse