Review by Booklist Review
Australian Weiss, 40 and unattached, left Sydney to spend a romantic year abroad and to write her second novel. Following the suggestion of her Czech father, a WWII immigrant to Sydney, she headed to Prague with $5,000 Australian (which will, astonishingly, keep her afloat for an entire year). Staying in her father's communist-era flat outside Prague, Weiss explored the country, met extended family, and avoided writing. Fellow ex-pats entertainingly typecast themselves: an American artist/nymphomaniac, a lovelorn young Swede, and a hard-drinking Aussie hell-bent on meeting Bohemian beauties. Weiss charms us with a touch of Bridget Jones (her love for rich Czech food quickly inciting an all-out war with her waistline; thank goodness for the Czech Republic's bounty of picturesque hiking trails!), and triumphs when she ultimately ditches her novel in favor of this memoir. Weiss' personal journey follows a rather predictable trajectory, and, as she herself reveals, her year in Prague was one where nothing earth-shattering occurred. However, it's a pleasure to sit alongside her as she digests this place and the heritage she never knew she had.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Forty years old, with no career and in the shadow of her more successful siblings, Weiss takes her life's savings and heads to Prague for a year to discover the home of her ancestors, write the great Australian novel, and find romance. Unable to speak Czech, Weiss ends up befriending a small, colorful group of English-speaking expatriates who take her under their wings and introduce her to life in Prague. Author of another travel memoir, Are We There Yet?, Weiss offers a pleasantly readable narrative sprinkled with colorful bits of Aussie slang and funny and touching family moments, including a death-defying drive to the village of her father's family and a chilling visit to Terezin (Theresienstadt), the German showcase concentration camp where her grandfather died after a four-year internment. Verdict While in the mold of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, Weiss's acutely observant book will particularly appeal to women and should be especially popular in libraries serving patrons with Czech ancestry.-Linda M. Kaufmann, Massachusetts Coll. of Liberal Arts Lib., North Adams (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
