*_Not So Fast: A Grand Tour of Europe at a Mid-Life Pace_ by Phebe Dale Hanson and Joan Murphy Pride (Nodin Press)*
Two old friends decide in their mid 50s to take a “not so fast” tour of Europe, where stops at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and a small village in the Italian Alps are interspersed with side trips to the travelers’ childhoods, early married life, and many points in between. These essays blend breezy travel writing, gentle humor, and personal memoir, letting us in on dozens of little stories told from two different perspectives and making us privy to what each thinks before the other knows about it. The reader will feel, as Phebe writes after visiting Joan’s Italian relatives, “They took me in as if I were one of them.”
Comment